“Why not?” Rhonda asked. The question was mostly rhetorical. The reason didn’t matter; the fact that she was trapped did.
“Because we do not want any outside group stealing information,” the computer said.
Rhonda stared at the panel as if it had been the source of the voice. “What if I want to go into your programming to change it so we can make outside access?”
“That is not possible. My system is designed to terminate before that is allowed to happen.”
She cursed and sat in her chair. What options did she have left?
She could trust that the Gyonnese would come to their senses and take her to a Multicultural Tribunal. Then, at least, she would get some human contact and maybe there would be some hope.
But in trusting that, she was risking Emmeline. In fact, Rhonda was risking everything she had done over the past fourteen years. She might even be risking the clones—normal girls living normal lives somewhere in the Alliance, not knowing that they were clones at all.
Like Talia.
Her heart twisted. She hadn’t prepared Talia for this. Rhonda had thought this was all done. She had thought they would be safe.
All she had done was tell her daughter—the daughter who had lived with her for thirteen years—to contact an attorney on Armstrong. Could a child even make an intersystem contact?
She wasn’t sure.
She wiped her forehead. It was covered with sweat despite the chill. She had to remain focused.
She could try to overpower the Gyonnese, see if she could figure out how to use their links, and maybe contact a ship. All she had to do was touch them to disgust them. That would send them back a few paces.
But they would rally. She’d seen that, too. For all their disgust, they did attack. When they wrapped themselves around a human, they would actually crush the ribcage.
She’d be risking injury, maybe even death.
And even if she did that, what would happen? She couldn’t contact a ship on her own, not through this facility. She’d have to get them to contact a ship. She knew she couldn’t do that.
If she tried and failed, she would be risking not just Talia and Emmeline, but all of her daughters.
That was a risk she couldn’t take.
She was outnumbered and she had never been very strong in the first place. It hadn’t taken the Recovery Man long to overpower her, and she had had a weapon then.
There was only one way off this station.
She pulled the pills from her pocket. One pill a day would clear the remaining antitoxins from her system. Two taken at the same time would make her seriously ill. Like so much medication, cydoleen in large doses was a lethal poison.
“God,” she whispered, and she wasn’t sure if it was a prayer or if it was a comment.
If the stakes were simply hers, she would fight the Gyonnese. She could risk her own life. But she wasn’t sure she could risk Emmeline’s again. Or the other five.
Or Talia.
If she hadn’t already sacrificed Talia.
Rhonda’s eyes filled with tears and she blinked them away. The Gyonnese had stopped arguing. The leader was explaining the procedure for extracting information.
She didn’t have a lot of time.
She closed the wall panel, hiding the one-way mirror, and shut down the control panel.
Then she climbed back into the box.
She wished she had one more chance to see Talia. One chance to explain it all and apologize.
But her daughter was smart and resourceful.
She would survive.
All Rhonda’s daughters would survive. They had to.
Rhonda poured the pills into her mouth and forced herself to swallow. She was choking on the dryness, the pills sticking in her throat.
But she reminded herself that the discomfort would be short.
She had to think of Talia.
Of Emmeline.
Of the years they’d have, the children they’d have, the lives they’d have because she got back in this horrible box.
And refused to surrender.
Fifty-three
It took the Port Security chief only forty-five minutes to find the Recovery Man’s ship. It had docked at one of the fanciest space ports this side of Jupiter.
At her request, the Port sent an image of the man who had gotten off the ship. He was smaller than Flint expected, but looked wiry and strong. The image of him also showed him favoring one arm.
Maybe Rhonda had hurt him.
He could only hope. And he could only hope that she was on that ship somewhere.
“The Alliance authorities will handle it now,” Zagrando said to Flint.
“They’re going to want to know if we’re sure it’s him. Have the Port send a voice match. He should have spoken to them before he landed. Space Ports like that want aural confirmation from a living voice.”
“Provided he used his own,” Zagrando muttered, and turned to the chief. But she had already heard and put in the request.
Flint paced around the fancy office, wondering what Armstrong would do with the same equipment. Catch a lot more criminals, probably. Maybe even make it impossible for people like him to come and go at will.
His hands were clenched tight behind his back and his shoulders ached. He wanted to pretend he didn’t care about finding his ex-wife, but he did.
He wanted to see Rhonda again and ask her what she had been thinking, why she hadn’t come to him for help. Why she had lied to him for the last year of their marriage.
Why she had done Aleyd’s bidding at all.
Zagrando was leaning over another desk, arguing with someone on-screen about sending the Recovery Man’s voice signature to the space Port. Flint wanted to get into the middle of that, too, wanted to take control of this entire investigation, but he couldn’t. He wasn’t police any longer, and he had never been police on Callisto.
The fact that he was here was courtesy on Zagrando’s part. Flint was struggling to remember that.
“Okay,” the chief said. “We have a vocal record.”
They ran it against the voice print from the conversation the Recovery Man had with Rhonda before he took her.
“It’s a match,” Zagrando said unnecessarily. Flint could see from a distance how well the two snippets matched.
He looked again at the little man who had left the ship.
“I want to go there with you,” Flint said to Zagrando. “Let’s take him ourselves.”
Zagrando gave him a small smile. “Even if I planned to leave here, which I don’t, I wouldn’t take you. You’re too invested.”
Flint wanted to argue that. But he knew Zagrando was right. Flint wanted to take the anger he’d been holding—first from Paloma’s betrayal, then from Rhonda’s—and turn it on someone.
The Recovery Man would do.
“The Alliance police have to be careful with this,” Flint said. “We don’t want to lose her.”
“We don’t even know she’s on the ship,” Zagrando said.
Flint knew that, too. He twisted his hands together. “They have to know the importance of keeping him alive, of finding her, of finding out what really’s going on.”
Zagrando put a hand on Flint’s shoulder. “I’ll give them the instructions myself.”
As if they’d listen to a police detective.
Flint knew Zagrando was right—it would take too long to get there. The Recovery Man could be gone before they arrived. And Flint wasn’t sure how he would handle coming face to face with the man.
No matter how betrayed he felt, Flint still thought of Rhonda as family. In some ways, she was the only family he had left.
He made himself take a deep breath. That type of thinking was why Zagrando wanted Flint to remain here.
“It shouldn’t be hard to find him,” Flint said. “Those Ports aren’t that big.”
Zagrando nodded, then let go of Flint’s shoulder. “Make sure they have a freeze on that ship,” Zagrando said t
o the chief. “Make sure it doesn’t go anywhere.”
“Done,” she said.
“And get me a private link to Alliance police.”
“Through there,” she said.
“Stay here,” Zagrando said to Flint.
Then Zagrando went through a side door. Flint stood for a moment in the center of the room.
He felt useless. He hated feeling useless.
He sank into a chair and waited.
Because he could do nothing else.
Fifty-four
Yu sat in a private booth in the message center of the medical wing. He cradled his right arm to his chest. His hand was gone; the skin over his wrist sealed so that he wouldn’t get any infections while he waited for the facility to finish customizing his new hand.
He’d seen the hand. It was a generic hand with soft-feeling skin. It would, the doctors assured him, work better than his own. They explained the attachments and what it was made out of and how he would use it. He paid as close attention as he could, but he found himself staring at it.
It didn’t look like his hand. It wouldn’t match the rest of him. He finally said something, and the doctor smiled.
“That’s what takes the longest,” she said. “We’ve taken your measurements, copied your left hand, and we have the old hand. This hand will shape itself to resemble your old hand, and its skin texture will match yours. It’ll even be properly aged so that it will look like the hand you lost.”
He hoped. He was paying enough for this. He had no idea body parts could be so expensive.
He ran his remaining hand through his hair, then closed the door to the privacy booth. He ran his own diagnostic, checking for tracers that attached themselves to messages and stole the information.
Just as he finished, he’d gotten an urgent notice on his own links. The notice had come from the message center, saying he had a communication waiting.
He would have preferred to go to his own ship, but the doctors warned him to stay close. They wanted him in as sterile an environment as possible while he waited for his hand. They had sealed his skin, but they worried that something might happen.
Although he suspected they worried about doing the work and not getting the payment. His ten percent down payment seemed laughably small, given the size of the remaining bill.
The privacy booth didn’t seem that sterile. It rose over him like a pointed egg, with the interior opaque. That made him nervous enough—all he could see through the walls were moving shadows—but the vaguely sour smell made him even more uncomfortable.
He kept his injured arm close, and used his personal code to call up the message.
One of the Gyonnese filled the screen in front of him. Its whiskers moved, then an automated voice with a flat tone said, “You have cheated us. We tried to stop the original payment and could not. You will not get your second payment.”
“What?” Yu said, but the Gyonnese did not respond. The message was as automated as the translator’s voice.
“The woman is dead. The medical program you sent confirms it. You told us she lived, and took our money. You will get no more from us. You will never work for the Gyonnese again. Do not appeal this decision. The woman’s employer has placed notification all over the Alliance that she has been kidnapped. If you appeal, we will prove that you acted alone. Do not contact us again.”
And with that, the image winked out.
The woman was dead? Yu ran his remaining hand over his face. How was that possible? He’d just knocked her unconscious. He hadn’t killed her.
Maybe the Gyonnese had. Or maybe she had died from the contamination.
He ran the message again. The automatic voice was flat, but the Gyonnese was angry. Its eyes widened and its whiskers moved rapidly as it spoke.
They hadn’t killed her—or if they had, they had done so accidentally.
He hadn’t realized she was so sick. If he’d known, he would have sent the good medical program, not the cheap one.
He sighed and shook his head. At least he made double his usual fee. The fact that they wouldn’t pay any more didn’t bother him. He had enough for the new hand, some ship upgrades, and a year without working—and that was just from this job. The remaining money in his various accounts would last him a decade or more even if he didn’t work again.
He might be able to make that stretch.
Or maybe he’d get the hand, and then head to the edges of the known universe. He’d find work out there just as quickly—or even more quickly—than he found work here.
He played the message one more time, recorded it onto his links, and shook his head.
The Gyonnese had never understood how the Alliance legal system worked. Just because they said they knew nothing about the kidnapping didn’t mean that there wasn’t proof of their involvement.
Yu had worried about this case, so he had kept everything—and not just on his own system. He had it on his ship, in one of his accounts, and on a backup network that he occasionally used.
If the Gyonnese turned him in, they’d suffer the consequences. He’d make sure of it.
He double-checked to make sure he had a copy of the Gyonnese message, then deleted the message from the private server. He didn’t try too hard to delete it; if he needed it in the future, it would be here, lurking in the message center’s system until they scrubbed the entire thing.
Backup upon backup upon backup.
Then he stared at his damaged arm. Maybe he’d get some kind of sterile sling or something to put over the wrist. He needed a drink—and not the crappy stuff they had in the medical wing.
He needed a drink and maybe some companionship and some kind of entertainment.
He needed to explore the rest of the facility so that he wouldn’t have to think of the woman he’d given them, and wonder how she’d died.
With his good hand, he pulled the door open, and froze. People surrounded his booth. They all wore silver uniforms with gray logos and badge numbers along the sleeve.
Earth Alliance Police.
He willed himself to be calm. He’d run into them before and survived. If he kept his wits, he’d survive this one.
The woman nearest him had ginger hair and skin so dark it made the hair glow. Her eyes were a silver that matched her uniform.
“Hadad Yu?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said, since there was no point in denying it.
“You’re under arrest.”
For any one of a thousand crimes. He wasn’t going to guess. “I don’t have to go with you unless you tell me what the charges are.”
“Kidnapping,” she said. “Transporting a human through the Alliance with the intention of selling her. Related theft and assault charges. And attempted murder.”
“Murder?” he blurted. They couldn’t have found Nafti’s body. It floated in the vastness of space between here and Io. There wasn’t even proof that Nafti had been on his ship; Yu had cleared all that off.
Nor was there obvious proof he’d held Rhonda Shindo, either.
“I didn’t try to murder anyone,” he said.
“A young woman named Talia Shindo disagrees,” the officer said. “Now, would you like to stand, or do we get to drag you out of there?”
She made it sound like she wanted to drag him.
He held out his damaged arm. “I’m here for medical treatment.”
“And you’ll get it, in the prison wing. We’ll leave as soon as they’ve grafted something on there.”
“I ordered a hand. I paid for it.”
“Fine,” she said. “You’re still under arrest.”
“What am I supposed to have kidnapped?” he asked.
“A woman named Rhonda Shindo, on Callisto.”
The Gyonnese had turned him in anyway, the bastards. They were vicious when they were denied their revenge.
“If I tell you a few things, will you let me go?” he asked.
“Not with charges like this,” she said. “But you can see what an
attorney will do for you. Do you have something to bargain with?”
“I always have something to bargain,” he said, sounding more confident than he felt as he stood and let them lead him away.
Fifty-five
Zagrando shut down the screen on his desk, set his links to emergency only, and leaned back in his chair. He was exhausted, and he wasn’t done.
At least his cover hadn’t been blown.
But he didn’t know what else he’d be able to take from this case.
The Recovery Man, a thief with a record so long that it took five minutes at top speed to scan all of it, had been arrested in the medical wing of a base not too far from Callisto. The man was cooperating; he claimed the Gyonnese were involved in the kidnapping, and he had the materials to prove it.
That wouldn’t keep the man—one Hadad Yu—out of Alliance prison, but it would reduce his sentence.
Or it would have, if they hadn’t discovered Rhonda Shindo’s body on an abandoned science base on Io. There was no evidence of Gyonnese involvement, nothing to show that she hadn’t simply been trouble for this Yu, and so he dumped her there, leaving her to die.
Or maybe she had already been dead.
Whatever happened, it didn’t matter. The upshot was the same: Rhonda Shindo was dead. Any questions Zagrando had about the case, about Aleyd, about the corporation’s shady dealings, had died with her.
Someone knocked on his door. He looked up to see Celestine Gonzalez. She looked as tired as he felt.
“You got my message?” he asked. He had sent her all the information, from Yu’s arrest to Shindo’s death.
She nodded.
“Come on in,” he said. “I need to talk to you.”
“We’re getting ready to leave,” she said. “I want to thank you for your help.”
“I didn’t do anything.” He literally hadn’t. The only person who had done anything at all had been Miles Flint, which left Zagrando feeling slightly embarrassed. If this crime had happened on Armstrong, a Space Traffic Control officer could have solved it in a matter of minutes.
Zagrando had trusted his own people, and they had let him down.
Recovery Man Page 28
