The observers are suits, not the doctors and students I once was used to seeing. I shouldn’t have been surprised. Valens finishes his lecture and turns his attention back to me. My body numbs as he finishes the connection and lifts his hands. “All right, Casey?”
“Fine,” I mumble. He dismisses the observers. For a moment, I close my eyes, relishing a cheerful recollection of the sensation of Valens’s shoulder breaking under a poorly aimed punch. I really wish I’d gotten to hit him twice.
“Comfortable?”
“Couldn’t tell if I wasn’t, Fred.”
He chuckles. “I want you to put some thought into your new arm, by the way. Since you won’t be taking it into combat, there’s no reason not to lay pseudoskin over it and match your complexion. More or less. It’ll still look a little off, of course.”
I think about it for a minute. Imagine something that might pass for a normal hand. From a distance. From six feet. “No.”
“No?”
I tell myself I have no intention of going through with the surgery. That I am arguing to string him along, stretch things out. Once I’ve got proof that Valens and Barb are somehow linked to Mashaya Duclose’s death, I can count coup, show brave, pay my debts. Get myself killed in the process or go home and die in peace.
I tell myself all that. Except. Gabe kissed me, damn him. “Steel. I want it the same as the old one. Armored.”
“Yes. We put the ‘skin’ over the armor. That’s what gives you the fingertip sensitivity. Fingertip, flat palm, back of the hand. Process developed by a Dr. Evans in the U.S. The arm itself stays numb, unfortunately. We’d overload your nervous system if we tried full-surface tactile. We can’t match the delicacy of the electrical impulses the human nervous system uses. Yet.” He turns and steps toward the door. “See you in cyberspace, Casey.”
I raise my voice with an effort. “I want steel, Valens. Make the skin transparent if you have to.” Why are you arguing? Why do you care?
I can see his booties, the bottom of his scrubs. And Valens strolls two more steps, stops, turns back to me, and draws a slow breath. “If that’s what it takes, then. That’s what we’ll do.”
I close my eyes as he walks through the door. The normal noises of the operating room resume, and someone — nurse, assisting physician, technician — asks me, “All set, Ms. Casey?”
“Locked and loaded,” I answer, numb on the padded table, and then even that falls away.
Nowhere and neverwhen
Stars.
Stars, and cold stillness like frost crystallizing on motionless skin. Heat like an iron stroked down my body on the opposite side. Light that should be blinding-bright, eye searing, casts white-sharp edges over a tumbling stone hanging either below or above; I’m not sure which.
Farther, a rustred curve, and I know where I am. Mother fucker. That’s Mars.
Which is when I realize:
I’m not flying the spaceship.
I am the spaceship.
“Valens, you cocksucker, you could have warned me.” I yelp out loud, and I’m surprised when I hear my own voice, clear and strangely external, as if recorded and played back.
And then I hear him laughing in my ear, self-satisfied as a cat. “I thought it would be more fun as a surprise. Pretty good, isn’t it?”
And it is. It is. I stretch and wriggle into the skin of the ship, the Indefatigable, Valens called it. Her. I can’t think of her as an object. Not when I’m living inside her, sailing serenely along in areosynchronous orbit. I spend a long moment realizing that there’s facility built into this beast for all the functions you would expect of a real space cruiser — some back-brain fraction of my awareness is tracking life support, hull integrity, the tickle of the solar wind on the edges of my furled solar sails. Diagnostics read full capability, and it reaches my conscious mind as an intoxicating euphoria, a spring-day desire to leap over fences.
“Valens, I’m going to kick this thing into gear.”
“Gently, Casey,” he offers. “Use the sails at first. And the attitude rockets. You want to nudge yourself higher before you hit the stardrive. Oh, and you don’t want to be pointing at the sun when you do it.”
Stardrive? “Wilco.” It’s incredible. Peaceful. There’s no pain, and not a scrap of fear. The solar sails unfurl like the wings of a swan, and I boost and turn myself, back to the solar wind that feels more like a gale. It’s hours — days — but they go by like time spent lying in bed on Sunday with a lover.
“Valens, aren’t your suits getting bored out there?”
“Actually, we’re altering your time sense a bit. We’ve been watching for fifteen minutes.”
“Oh.” That freaks me out; my course wobbles. I correct. It’s easier than learning to walk. Again.
I reach for cynicism, for the armor of biting wit and savage dismissal. It’s not there, not hanging in the closet where it should be, next to my raincoat. There’s nothing but the stars, and an old slow dull ache inside me like coming home.
“Status, Casey?”
“I can’t feel Mars tugging on my boots anymore.”
“Stow the sails.”
“Check.” Like furling wings, they slither into the embrace of my body. I — the Indefatigable—am shaped rather like a doughnut stuck halfway down a carving fork. The tines would point backward. The doughnut spins. Silly-looking thing.
“Sails stowed, Colonel.”
“Widen the focus on your navigation charts?”
“Got ’em.”
“You’re going perpendicular to the plane of the elliptic. Do you know what that means?”
Supercilious son of a bitch. “Up.” Brief silence. I picture the scene in the holotheater as he pauses and mutes what I can hear. I envision him punctuating his lecture with a jabbing finger, as he informs his audience that I’ve never been exposed to the software before today, that this is a dry run to show what a trained pilot can do even with unfamiliar tech — tech that can save lives, when applied to the birds and beasts of mechanized war. He’ll say just that. Save lives.
His voice comes back, then. “Roger that, Casey. We’ve put you back on real time. What’s going to happen now is that you’re going to take that baby up, out of the solar system. There’s a course plotted. It’ll take you to Alpha Centauri, which is a nearby star. There will be unexpected obstacles along the way… Dark matter, planetesimals. Virtually speaking, your craft is going to be moving faster than the speed of light, which means you’ll have no reliable visual input. Copy?”
“Copy. So how am I supposed to steer this thing, sir?” And I want to bite my tongue as soon as I’ve said it, imagining the satisfied expression on his face. Sir. You can take the girl out of the army, but you can’t take the army out of the girl.
“You should be able to feel what’s coming at you. It’s a function of the field the drive produces. We’ve got no justification for how it works, so don’t trouble yourself with that. It’s magictech, make-believe. Just run with it.”
Whatever. “Roger. How large an object do I worry about?”
“The drive field atomizes anything under about half a meter that it brushes up against. I would say, be on the safe side. Dodge anything bigger than a basketball. There’s not much out there.”
“Roger. Any last words?”
“Godspeed, Casey.”
And what a damned funny thing to say. “On my way, Fred.”
I point my nose up, and floor it.
And hell if he isn’t right. I’m flying blind, and it’s like water-skiing in the dark. I can feel the shape of space like a pressure against my skin. No — more like a pressure a few feet away from my skin. I get a taste of it at first, as the flickering aura of the drives brushes and consumes little things, barely noticeable things. Like running in a dust storm.
And then there’s a bigger piece, and I take evasive action, surprised by how fast I have to be on it and how slippery the bits of space garbage prove. The big ship flails a bit, more nimble than
it has any right to be, and it’s all riding invisible swells like making love in a pitch-black room, all guesswork and intuition and trying not to poke anybody in the eye and damn, it’s hard.
I’m holding it together pretty good until a dark body more massive than Mercury pops up a parsec or two to starboard, and the HMCSS Indefatigable is careening in a direction I didn’t send her and I’m under her, out of control as wrestling a goddamned pig on ice, slick-sliding sideways, fragile frame of the ship shredding like twisted straw as I fight her. Going into the ditch, and dammit, it’s just a little bitty lump of rock and the damned thing is sucking me in like a fucking black hole and then it’s not a starship and a starless night, it’s a rolling A.P.C., treads blown off, metal crushing under its own weight and nothing to do but hang on to the yoke like I could do any good at all and
Boom.
The rest is silence. For ten seconds, maybe fifteen. And then I’m back in my aching old body, shaking hard with reaction, and a tech I can’t see is pulling the wires out of my processors and another one is holding my right hand, squeezing hard as sensation returns.
“Damn,” she says, whoever she is. “That was some nice flying, Master Warrant. You’re the first one I’ve seen get that far on the first try.”
Which makes me wonder how many dry runs there have been. And why they have us flying a starship when we’re supposed to be testing out tanks, for crying out loud.
I sit up, too proud to scrub the tears off my cheeks, feeling the loss of that ship—just a toy, Jenny, dammit—like my damned arm has been blown off all over again.
3:45 P.M., Wednesday 13 September, 2062
Hartford, Connecticut
Downtown
Mitch leaned back in the passenger seat of Razorface’s jet-black, silver-detailed Cadillac and unclipped his HCD from his belt. He accepted the call flashing at the edge of his contact. “Afternoon, Doc.”
“Detective Kozlowski?”
“Please, Doctor Mobarak. Just call me Mitch.” Because, for one thing, I’m suspended without pay as of this morning.
“Then call me Simon. I’ve spoken with Mr. Castaign, Jenny’s friend. Can we meet?”
Mitch looked over at Razorface. They were stopped in traffic on the Founder’s Bridge over the Connecticut River. Razor was leaning out the driver’s window, watching the girls walk by on the footbridge that ran from East Hartford to downtown. They turned around, giggling at the shining black car with the chromed cattle-catcher embracing the grille. Mitch decided not to ask how often Razorface felt the need to ram things. “Razor.”
“Yah?”
“Wanna swing by the hospital?”
The big gangster nodded, rubbing his jaw.
“Simon. We’ll be there in less than twenty minutes, assuming we ever get off this bridge. Want to meet in the caf?”
Twenty-three minutes later by his heads-up, Mitch strolled into the Hartford Hospital cafeteria alongside Razorface; they met Simon Mobarak standing next to a potted ficus near the long bank of windows. “Traffic?”
“The usual,” Mitch answered. “Simon, this is Razorface. Razor, Doctor Simon Mobarak.”
It was a measure, Mitch thought, of how subdued Razorface was that he didn’t bother trying to intimidate the smaller man with his namesake grin. Instead, he shook Mobarak’s hand and followed as the doctor led them to an out of the way table in the corner by the conference rooms. Mitch recognized Mobarak’s placid face and reserved manner as the professional stillness associated with bad news, and silently braced himself.
When they were sitting, Mobarak leaned forward and spoke without preamble. “I’ve gotten in touch with Gabe Castaign, Jenny’s friend in Montreal. Except he’s in Toronto now, and he’s seen her.”
“How she doing?” Razor leaned forward, elbows on the table. Mobarak met the gangster’s gaze, in his element, refusing to be pressured.
“Poorly. Castaign says she’s agreed to some surgery that may correct problems with her implants. In handling her follow-up care, I only recently became aware that there might be a problem, and I planned to complete some research and get my ducks in a row before I sat down to hash out a course of treatment with her. She seems to have jumped the gun a bit.”
“A bit,” Mitch cut in. “This surgery you’re talking about. It’s — what, replacing some worn-out hardware?”
“According to Castaign, it’s a total refit. Ground up, with new technology, and it could kill her. Apparently she’s back under the care of the surgeon who did the original work. A guy called Valens”—Razor sucked in a ragged breath—“you’ve heard of him?”
“Heard Maker say the name once or twice. Not real kindly.”
“I know. He apparently sent her sister down here to collect her — well, this is pretty irrelevant stuff. Anyway, Castaign sounds worried sick. I’m actually going to message Jenny and see if I can twist her arm into letting me be present for her surgery and recovery.”
“Lot of time away from your practice, Doc.” Mitch cast a longing glance the length of the cafeteria, toward the gleaming silver coffee machines. He didn’t miss the complexity of emotions that crossed Mobarak’s face, though. Aha. Someone has an unprofessional attachment to a certain patient, or I miss my guess entirely.
“My copractitioners can cover for me. God knows I have the time coming, and it’s a brand-new technique I may not get an opportunity to see again anytime soon.”
“Sure thing, Doc. Look—” but Razorface stopped him with a big hand on his wrist.
“You gonna see Maker?” the gangster interrupted.
“I’m going to try.”
“Give her this.” Razorface slid a long olive green plastic box across the table. Mobarak took it from his hand, lifted it up. “What’s in it?”
“Hide it when you cross the border, man,” Razorface said. “Something from her shop. I expect she gonna want it.” He avoided Mitch’s eyes.
Mitch had a pretty good guess what was in that box. Damn. Right out from under my nose. And if I ever wondered how this man rules half a fucking city by the strength of his word, I know the answer now.
Later, on the sidewalk outside the unmistakable white brick towers of the hospital, Razorface turned as if to walk away from Mitch without speaking. The cop dogged his heels. “Razor.”
“What?”
“That was a nice gesture back there.”
“Figured you’d be pretty pissed off about it, is all. Since you said don’t touch it.”
“Nah.”
Razorface didn’t stop, but he hesitated long enough for Mitch to fall into step. He didn’t say anything, either.
“Where you going?”
“I got a word, piggy. Word in my ear about a witness. Going to go get my boys now, go pay a visit. Might mean doing some things a cop wouldn’t want to know about, is all.”
“Razor.” Mitch thought about laying a hand on the big man’s sleeve and decided he’d rather keep it. “I’m not a cop anymore, man. Not once the review board finishes with me. I blew it.”
“Wondered when the fuck you were gonna get round to telling me that.” The hulking warlord stopped midstride, fluidly turned, and looked down at Mitch. “You don’t mind getting killed young, I got a use for you.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean, Razor?”
“You want a fucking job or what?”
No different than waiting for the SWAT team, really, Mitch thought later that night, ear tuned for the sound of gunfire. They sat in Razor’s Cadillac in an alley near a specific house in New Britain, so far outside Razorface’s territory that his boys weren’t even wearing their colors.
Mitch checked his heads-up for the thirtieth time — still only a little past one — and sighed. Razorface reached out and punched him in the shoulder. “They can’t tell us anything dead.”
“How come you drive your own car, Razor?”
“I like to. How come you talk so fucking much?”
“I suck at waiting.”
“Learn.” Razorface shifted in his chair, clinking earrings shining in the darkness like a pirate’s. He reached up and touched a gold ear clip nestled in among them, opened his door. “Moving.”
“Copy.” Mitch came out the passenger side low, following the leather-jacketed ghost that seemed to vanish into the dimness. He palmed a nine millimeter that wasn’t the gun he usually carried and thumbed the safety off, checking the weight of three extra clips swinging in his jacket pocket. “Didn’t hear any shots.”
Razorface didn’t answer. Shadowy figures surrounded them as they moved around the house to the back. Mitch passed a pair of Hammerheads watching the front door from outside the gleam of a single streetlight. Razorface nodded to them as he passed. Mitch stepped wide around the red puddle seeping from the corpse at their feet. Knife. Of course, how silly of me. You’re in it now, Mitchy, he thought, and Mashaya. He crouched low as a staccato pattering of bullets finally shattered windows on the second story. Outbound. More gunfire followed, in earnest, and Razorface stuck tighter to the shadows.
Broken glass tinkled away from his boot as he slipped through uncut grass. The rear door stood open, spilling a wedge of light across the yard, and Razorface came up on it at an angle. A dozen gangsters—kids, teenagers—surrounded him and Mitch. One of the kids moved toward the door in the darkness, and Razor stopped him with an outstretched hand.
“After me,” he hissed, which Mitch thought was pretty ballsy — even if there were Hammerheads in the house already. From the grin on the warlord’s face, Mitch thought the bravado was intentional — the old cock fluffing his tail feathers in front of the chicks. What a politician he would have made.
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