by Watson Davis
"Pleased to make your acquaintance." Vanessa bowed over the girl's hand.
"Can I stand here and watch you guys?" Santina asked.
Vanessa looked to me, raising her eyebrows, bobbing her head slightly.
I pursed my lips and said, "Sure. Just back up out of the ring."
"And remember," Vanessa whispered, "I'm trying to make the old broad feel better about herself. I'm allowing her to win. She's kinda old and feeble, and this is good for her morale."
"Oh." Santina nodded, blinking. "Okay."
Vanessa whirled, hurling herself at me, launching a series of rapid strikes. I retreated, slapping her hands aside, staying centimeters out of her range, pivoting right, left, teasing her forward, wary of Vanessa's rhythm. She changed her pattern, the order of her techniques, trying to lull me to sleep and catch me napping again, but in her hesitation, I struck, lunging in, reversing a block into a backfist, catching her in the cheek, knocking her down to one knee.
Vanessa rolled away from me, out of the way of my stomping heel, my foot slamming into the ground where she'd fallen. She bounced to her feet, spitting blood, spinning toward Santina saying, "See? I let her win that one. I could have taken her down any time I wanted to."
"Wow." Santina stared at Vanessa with huge eyes. "Can I learn how to fight?"
I approached them, my attention still on Vanessa although my gaze was focused on Santina. "You want us to teach you hand-to-hand?"
"Yeah," she said.
"Excellent." Vanessa slammed her gloves together and launched a hammerfist my way.
I blocked it, meeting her forearm with mine, hooking my hand around to trap her wrist, missing as Vanessa yanked her arm back. To Santina, I said, "If you really want to learn, we would love to train you, but you have to be serious about the training, you have to make coming to the gym part of your routine. You're going to hurt. Your body is going to ache. You're going to have to drag your butt in here despite your pain."
"Okay, I understand," she said. Her mouth tightened. She whispered, "And I thought about what you said."
"Oh?" I crossed my arms over my chest.
"I want to keep going."
I smiled, a knot releasing in my heart, a tightness I hadn't realized existed, my breath filling my lungs more easily. "Good."
"Ohmie!" Edmund's voice thundered through the gym. "A word."
# # #
My stomach flipping and burning with sour bile, heart fluttering like a torn envirocloth in front of an atmo vent, I ripped my gloves off my hands and tossed them beside the mat.
Edmund waited in the doorway to the rehab room with his back against the slit where the door slid into the wall, one foot in the gymnasium, the other foot in the rehab room, arms crossed over his chest. Not looking at me, he gnawed on his lower lip, head bowed.
"Yeah, boss." I tried to keep my tone neutral and ambled toward him, picking at the binding on my left hand, pulling it loose, unwrapping it. "We need to talk."
“Yeah.” He nodded, staring down between his feet, pursing his lips, furrowing his brow. "We do."
I slipped past him into the empty rehab room; a metal cot stood against the far wall beneath a poster of the nervous system, with points noted for attack and for health, and carts were piled high with bottles of medicines and liniments. Edmund’s musky scent gave way to the tart, eye-searing tang of antiseptics and lemons.
I pulled at the wrapping on my right hand, working the end free before I turned to him without looking at him, concentrating on the wrapping instead. How do I start?
"I have to know something," he said, his voice low and rough, stepping away from the door and allowing it to zip shut behind him.
"Yeah?" I took a deep breath, thinking of all the different ways I had played this conversation out in my head, and wondering which path this would follow. "What?"
"Who are you working for?" His eyes drilled into me, his lips twisting into an angry snarl.
"What?" I let my hands fall to my side, a long strip of the wrapping trailing from my right wrist. "What the hell are you jabbering on about?"
"I don't like being used," he said. "My team is my family, and I'm going to do everything I can to keep them from getting hurt."
"Well?" I said, my palms on my hips. "Yeah, and?"
"If you do anything to damage my team, I will knock you down and tear you up so fast, you won't see it coming," he said.
"Okay, I comprehend you, but take a second out of your insanity to try and comprehend me. I drew my first breath in the Atreides military garrison at the edge of the Hellas basin, was raised in every Hellene base on Mars at one time or another by my grandparents, both ex-military, following my mom around from duty station to duty station. I joined the service as soon as the ink on my citizen's certificate dried, and I battled my way up to Major in Advanced Recon." I lifted my hands. "I'm a fucking Hellene, and a goddamned Martian, but now, I work for FountainCorp. This team, your team, is my family too. I will do everything in my power and more to protect them."
"Mm-hmm." He nodded. "And if someone pays you more?"
"I didn't ask to be some vile money-grubber like you." I shook my head, fighting to keep tears of anger and frustration out of my eyes, fighting to keep my voice level and my lower lip from quivering. "If you think for a half a second I'd do anything to endanger Vanessa, or Missy, or even you, then you're even stupider than you look—something I didn't consider possible."
"Be warned." He pointed at me, moving toward the door until it slid out of his way. "I'm watching you. And that thing we did?"
"That thing?" I stalked after him, fists clenched, jaw tight. "Really? That's how you're going to play that off?"
"No, I'm playing that off as a mistake." He waved his hand. "Far as I'm concerned, it never happened."
I didn't know what to say, so I didn't say anything.
He stomped off across the gym and out the hatch on the far side, as my face grew hot from my rising blood.
Vanessa, her eyebrows arched, crept toward me, and Santina followed her. Peering back at the door through which Edmund had left, Vanessa whispered, "What was that about?"
“Nothing.” I tossed my sweaty bandages into the recycle chute and shook my head. "Absolutely nothing."
Vanessa nodded. "Okay then."
# # #
Mercedez sat at her place near the unimportant end of the Eldests' dinner table. Her head drooping and her shoulders hunching, she clasped her hands in her lap, gazing down through her blue lace tutu at her hot-pink high heels. Her stomach growled and her nose twitched at the scents wafting up from the kitchens, the savory perfume of tonight's dinner—a roasted lamb and grilled vegetables—brought up by the air blowing from the air con. The cooks down below laughed, the dishes, glasses, and silverware clinking as the children awarded with kitchen duty prepared to set the table.
"So you took it upon yourself to order Eddy to end the life of the daughter of the president of Highcastle station?" Jarod, First Father of the Gorovitz Family, lounged in his big, cushy chair, legs crossed, leaning back and tapping his lips with the index finger of his left hand, staring out from his Family base at the Golden Orchid mining colony, his back to Mercedez and the rest of the people at table.
"Yes, sir," Mercedez said, heart heavy, throat tight. "Eddy thought someone was on his trail. I couldn't risk the ship."
Jarod spun his chair around, glaring at Mercedez through the ghostly HV ledger hovering before him. "Do you have any idea how much losing the Highcastle contract cost us?"
Mercedez cringed, sinking down a little further in her seat. "Yes, sir."
Roscoe, Third Father, gold chains around his neck hanging down and glittering in the light, leaned forward on his thick, steroid-enhanced arms with his elbows on the wooden table—real wood, planks of oak grown in the Mansker nursery in orbit around Venus—twisting to the side to let his great-grandson, Pyotr, put an empty plate before him. "We've been seeing some FountainCorp Security dickheads poking around variou
s ports. They've been all over the Firefox station. Might have been them."
"Firefox?" Chere, Second Mother, shifted in her chair and raised her eyebrows, turning her head to look at Roscoe. "Why is that a concern of ours? I don't recall any work for us on Firefox."
"We shanghaied a batch of street kids from there not long ago and delivered them to a LightDream lab for medical experimentation," Mercedez said, offering what little knowledge she had, hoping to improve her status and lessen the coming reprimand.
Chere glanced at Mercedez, then returned her gaze to Roscoe. "Even so, why are they fucking with us?"
"LightDream pushed their work too far, too fast. Frankl says FountainCorp got a covert ops team in before smashing the place into quarks." Roscoe slid his plate away to give himself room. "I suspect they recovered some intel, and they're putting a case together to smear LightDream's name. Frankl prattled on about the station being a Unity base. I don't know why. Showing them dealing with a Family to acquire healthy bodies to dissect would help blacken LightDream's eye a bit, lose them some credibility, some market share. Although, it's not like FountainCorp doesn't use our services themselves."
"Did we ever find out what the research was?" Jarod asked, patting Pyotr's back as the boy placed the plate before the First Father.
A glass broke, shattered on the deck, dropped by one of the younger girls. Mercedez rose up in her chair, ready to go help, praying for escape, but the First Mother left the grill to check on the girl, to make sure she hadn't been cut and to direct the cleanup. Mercedez retreated to her chair.
Roscoe rubbed his forehead. "Dr. Nieve from LightDream had several projects being conducted in the station, concentrating on melding biological with mechanical."
"Cyborgs?" Chere snorted, shaking her head. "Really? How quaint."
"Nothing quite as mundane as grafting mechanical parts onto humans or replacing appendages or anything," Roscoe said. One of the younger nephews bounced into the kitchen, chewing on the barrel of a toy gun. Roscoe, grunting, grabbed the boy beneath his arms, picked him up and sat him in a highchair. "The main gist was to go back to the old nanotech approach and develop a new pathway, some sort of forced evolution, incorporating mechanical with the biological. I never got all the details."
"Whatever." Jarod waved his hand, brushing the HV ledger aside to clear his area. He murmured, “An abomination in the eyes of the Lord, either way.”
The Eldest Daughter carried a heaped plate of asparagus up the stairs from the kitchen, dodging one of the youngsters sitting on the floor adjacent to the dining table, a plastic spoon in its hand, banging on a bent and rusty skillet.
"It was an idle curiosity." Jarod smiled and winked at his eldest daughter. He snatched a spear of asparagus from the plate, and she swiped at his hand. "They can do anything they want with the merchandise we send to them. Can we spin this into a windfall? Are they going to need any more test subjects?"
The Eldest Daughter turned and jogged through the children, back down the stairs for more dishes.
"Nieve hasn't decided yet." Roscoe gestured with his hand, and a report appeared in the air before him, virtual pages flipping as he twitched his fingers, his eyes darting, looking for something. "LightDream may back off because of FountainCorp's involvement."
Jarod snatched another spear of asparagus and reclined, crossing his leg over his knee and stretching his right arm up, his hand on his neck. "Think we could convince LightDream to pay us a reasonable sum to make the FountainCorp evidence go away?"
Roscoe grabbed a spear of asparagus for himself.
"Uncle Roscoe!" the Eldest Daughter said. "We haven't said grace yet."
Roscoe jerked his hand back, but still nibbled the tip of the asparagus, a grin on his lips. "Jarod's going to eat them all."
The Eldest Daughter sighed, pursed her lips and furrowed her brow as she settled a steaming bowl of cheesy potatoes in the middle of the table. She whirled back toward the kitchens, yelling, "Mom! They're eating all the sides."
Chere shifted forward, sniffing at the potatoes, and hoisted her spoon. Mercedez's stomach grumbled, but she kept herself from reaching out and snatching some for herself, not wanting to draw any more attention to herself than necessary.
Roscoe chewed on his asparagus and said, "I could always talk to Nieve, see how much he's willing to cough up."
Jarod chuckled, sitting up straight. "That would serve those bastards right."
"Quittin’ time," said the First Mother—Georgia by name, Jarod's wife, and mother of most of his children—carrying the first platter of roasted lamb, with a gaggle of children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren following behind her.
"One last thing." Jarod held up his hand as he stood. He pointed at Mercedez. "You."
Mercedez sat up straighter, her heart hammering in her chest, her lungs almost refusing to breathe, her palms itching. "Sir."
Jarod grinned. "Good work. Last thing we need is for our transports to be compromised. The second-to-last thing we need is for someone to broadcast particulars of our biz to the whole damned system. Good call."
The First Mother nodded her head, a proud smirk on her lips, catching Mercedez's eye and winking at her.
"Thank you, sir." Mercedez stood and took her spot behind her seat, bowing her head, unable to stifle her smile, her chest expanding.
Jarod, his fingertips on the tabletop, waited for everyone to find their chairs at the four long tables in the Great Hall. With everyone standing in their assigned seats and their heads bowed in respect, he bowed his own, saying, "Dear Lord, I would like to give thanks for this food we are about to receive."
A Night Off
"Drink up." Lorber slurred the words, sitting across from me at a round wooden table, her face red as she held a glass of FountainCorp vodka out to me. "Gus said blow off steam, and you're holding all your steam in."
I took the glass from her, knocked it back, flipped it over, and slammed it to the table. "Fuck Director Perisho."
"Now you're getting the hang of it." Malordo pointed to me and then slapped my right shoulder, a forest of upside-down shot glasses standing before her, her eyelids fluttering. "Blow that steam out, baby. Feels better, right?"
“Yeah.” I nodded, deducing the best option was to lie and agree.
Sly, seated to my left, launched himself to his feet, yelling at one of the many HV feeds hovering near the ceiling of the bar, this one showing a football game between a couple of local station teams. Moritz, rooting for the other team, put her palms on her forehead, groaning.
I smiled in Sly's direction, feigning joy for him and his team, but my eyes drifted past him to find Edmund at the table next to us. He leaned over the table, staring into the glass of liquor before him, his weight poised on his thick forearms. He raised his gaze, meeting mine for a fleeting second, but I glanced away hoping he didn't see I was gawking at him, hoping he wouldn't come over, hoping he would.
Vanessa sat on one side of him, contemplating his every word, soaking up his infinite wisdom, and Kevin hunched down on the other side, his face sullen, milking a tall glass of something dark and nasty. Next to Kevin, Callus lay with his cheek on the table snoring, his arms hanging straight down, twitching now and then, muttering in his drunken stupor.
Edmund stood, raising his glass and calling out, "To the fallen."
Every one of us grabbed our glasses and stood, echoing his call—everyone but Callus, but even he somehow seized his glass, elevating it a couple of inches off the table without seeming to wake up or regain consciousness. We downed our shots, and I slammed my glass on the table, throwing myself back in my seat.
A blond woman strutted through the door, broad-shouldered and smacking chewing gum, her hair almost silver. I thought she seemed familiar, but could not place her. I thought she might have reminded me of one of the girls from prison, or one of the thousands of women who worked the streets around the bases I'd grown up in, but no one important.
The size of her heels made
her long, thin, white legs seem even longer, thinner, and whiter. Her skimpy shorts struggled to contain her butt-cheeks, as tiny as those butt-cheeks were, but she carried two tase sticks hidden in her puffy shirt, easy to access and the outlines invisible if you didn’t know where to look. She sidled down the bar, past the glass shelves jam-packed with liquors and bottles from all over the solar system, a normal-looking brunette woman with a nervous air following along in the her vapor trail. The smile the blonde wore on her vibrant blue lips faded as she approached, her eyes jumping from person to person. "Hey, gang. Bad mission?"
Edmund jumped to his feet, his chair tumbling to the ground behind him. "Christal."
I blinked. Her picture hung in Edmund's locker. That was where I knew her from. So, not his sister, then. I could not catch my breath, so I stood, wiped my hands on my jeans, and calculated my path to the exit.
The original team members—excluding Vanessa and me—turned and waved to her, smiling, all of them friendly with her, which didn't make me feel any less nauseated.
Vanessa popped up out of her chair, extending her hand toward the woman. "Hi. I'm new to the team. Vanessa. Glad to meet you."
Christal stopped chomping on her gum with her mouth half-open, hesitant, her eyes narrowing. She nodded, putting her hand out and letting Vanessa close the distance and take it. "Yeah. You, too."
I stepped toward the door.
Vanessa indicated me with her hand. "And that's Dorothea. She's the other newbie."
I halted and then changed direction, walking over and offering my hand. "Hey."
"Hey." She studied me, touching my hand; her hand was cold, and she slipped it back out as soon as we touched.
I backed away.
She put one hand on Edmund's chest, the other on his back, rubbing it. "Hey, baby." She pulled her attention from Edmund, her eyes gliding over the team, picking out each one. "Is this everyone?"
"Yeah." Edmund gulped, nodding, glowering down at the table. "Gang's all here."
"Oh, baby." Christal put her head on Edmund's shoulder, reaching her hand up to touch his cheek, trying to turn his head to face her.
