He wrapped his arms around her from behind and kissed the back of her neck. “That’s enough talk like that. I really need to get going before Vasquez reads me the riot act.”
“Maybe I’m being silly. Kali thinks it’s a sign of weakness to want kids, or someone to be with… like it would make her less of a woman not to be alone.”
He offered a one-armed shrug. “If it works for her, great. Think about what you want.”
She tried to prolong their embrace as much as she could, but he left far too soon for her liking. Risa sighed at the door and walked backwards until she fell, seated, on the bed. Sleep was out of the question. Her mind swam amid a tangle of hope and worry. Cleaning up the mess they’d made of the bedroom the previous night ate some time, after which she ‘semmed coffee.
The ‘windows’ flooded the apartment with a warm orange glow. Artificial sunlight had made the spot by the corner table quite warm. Had she been wearing anything, it would have been uncomfortable. No appetite manifested by the time she drained the cup. Sitting in this apartment alone all day would be intolerable, even if every atom of the place smelled like him. She thought of bringing Kree here, away from the MLF and violence, hoping a ‘normal’ environment might help the girl cope with whatever she had witnessed.
They had that in common. Both of them had watched a parent die. Even if Colonel Black wasn’t who he claimed to be, he was still her father. If he hadn’t cared for her, he would never have covered the vent with his body… or he would’ve killed her when he got rid of her mother. She trudged to the autoshower, poking the button three times in a futile effort to get the machine to start up faster. The safety lock clicked, the motor in the floor whirred to life, and soon a cascade of warm water surrounded her, melting away the worry.
Risa.
Raziel’s voice flooded her senses, locking her limbs, a wave of tingling electrical sparks riding up and down her nerves. She slumped against the tube, grabbing the handrail to keep from falling. As overwhelming as his presence could be, this felt like a whisper―it paralyzed rather than burned. She sank to her knees, hands flat on the warm metal. Swirling water gathered at her leg on its way to the drain in the center.
“Please. No more,” she whispered. “I won’t murder anyone else.”
I do not desire you to take life.
She curled tight, shaking from the divine presence gripping her body.
A situation has arisen. Innocents are at risk.
“Why?” Risa tried to sit up, but her muscles locked. “Why me?”
Because you see them as people, not as numbers.
“You’re asking me to fight.” Risa cried. Her aversion to this war clashed with guilt at the thought she could cast aside the will of an angel―an angel who had chosen her. How ready she had once been to do anything he asked for the good of the Martian people? Was she fooling herself with Pavo and Kree? Would this world truly allow Risa Black to become normal? Shaking, she pressed her forehead to her fists. The best she could hope for was to shield them from the death that followed her. “What would you have me do?”
Agents from UCF military intelligence plan to set off explosives in an agricultural outpost, and attribute the attack to the Front.
“What?” She forced her head up, gritting her teeth from the agony of fighting her own muscles. “Murder their own citizens?”
Yes.
“But, why? Those people… They’re UCF, why would they attack them?”
They are citizens of Mars. To find the why, ask yourself what is the root of all evil.
She dragged herself to her feet, closing her eyes against the onrush of soap foam. “Money?”
Greed.
“Where?”
A NuOrganix grow facility several miles southeast from Cydonia. A settlement known as Arden.
Risa’s mind leapt back to the man at the noodle bar. “When?”
Forty-nine hours.
“Shit. Come on, come on.”
She slapped at the console, trying to hurry the autoshower into rinse mode. Raziel’s presence released her. She bounced on her toes, rattling the handle until the dry cycle ended and the door unlocked. After sprinting to the bedroom, she rummaged among her belongings in search of the NetMini. It lit up when she seized it out of her boot. She opened her contacts list. Her finger covered the roguish grin she wanted more than anything to have in the room with her at that moment.
Pavo didn’t answer.
She held the small onyx slab against her forehead, whimpering into a sob before rationality overtook emotion and she remembered Defense Force policy required him to shut down personal devices while on duty.
“Dammit.”
She stared at the ceiling for a second before grabbing her armor, ignoring how cold the slippery, flexible material felt so soon after a shower. Risa stuffed her feet into her boots, clasping them with one hand while pulling her pistol harness over her shoulder with the other. Halfway down the street to the stairwell back to the surface, she remembered to pull the armor fastener up to her neck, covering her chest. She paused at the entrance to the huge stairway, holding her face with both hands, too angry to cry and too sad to scream. Late commuters, most of them affiliated with the MDF, passed by while giving her curious, wary glances. Another attempt to call him went straight to vid-mail.
“Pavo. Something’s come up. My imaginary friend needs a favor. I can’t talk on this line. I’m fine. I didn’t want you to worry when I wasn’t there when you got home.”
Risa stared up at the ceiling.
“Please tell him I’m okay.”
Risa raced from the shuttle pad after a ten-minute flight from Elysium to Primus. She sprinted across the crowded terminal and down the escalator to the underground city. Tunnel by tunnel, she ran until she found a dark place to get into the ventilation network. Old, familiar passages felt like home. She found her way to the Martian Liberation Front safehouse by instinct, the use of a map having long since become unnecessary. The duct narrowed over the last fifty meters, forcing her to drag herself along like a snake.
That’s the first thing we have to fix about Mars. The PubTran taxis need to work.
After decades of settlement, between the merchandise from shops spilling into the street, the opportunistic and the unwanted loitering about, and the crumbling walls, it was fastest to travel on foot.
Or, in Risa’s case, on hands and knees in vents. Another vertical drop offered a slide down to the same level as the safehouse. This shaft, an old main feed once used to bring air to mining operations, had enough clearance to let her run while stooped over. At the end, she punted the cover open and dropped out into a dimly lit hallway packed with storage cases. Three boys lazed around, tinkering with old, broken electronics.
Sam gawked. Kyle, who hadn’t seen her, shrieked when she rushed past him. Risa offered a brief, apologetic glance at them, but didn’t stop. Hoses, wires, and boxes formed a veritable obstacle course as she ran down the hallway, hooked a left, and sprinted past their sad excuse for an infirmary and a communal shower. A number of voices echoed inside over the hiss of water spraying metal ground. A right at the end brought her to Death Row. Purple drew her eyes to her room.
Kree slept curled up on her bed.
Risa stopped, leaning on the wall by the door without going in. The child seemed peaceful. As much as she wanted to spend time with her, make sure she was okay, and forget all about the war, she had an angel waiting on her. Four agonizing seconds later, she pushed away from the doorjamb and ran to the sunken central area. She didn’t bother taking the curved stairway, instead vaulting over the railing to the floor ten feet below. Her catlike landing attracted the attention of two men and three women working the communications arrays, but neither General Maris nor Garrison reacted. Garrison led a logistical discussion about a new remote outpost.
“Garrison,” said Risa, striding right up to him as if Maris wasn’t there, “I need to talk to you right now.”
“Lieutenant Black.”
Maris imposed himself between them. “Do you make it a habit of ignoring generals and interrupting colonels?”
She ripped her gaze away from Garrison to stare up at the imposing dark-skinned man. “Remind me which elected official commissioned your rank? Oh, that’s right… You gave it to yourself. Until you’re representing a legal military force beholden to a legitimate government of Mars, you’re just an old man wearing costume stars. Get over yourself, and get out of my way.”
Everyone froze. Several muffled gasps, and one poorly suppressed nervous laugh, broke the stillness. Such quiet fell over the area that the infinitesimal whispery hum of dozens of holo-emitters grew audible.
Veins swelled beneath Maris’s forehead. He looked as likely to punch her as scream. “You are damn lucky I don’t bring you up―”
“Bring me up? Hah! On what? Court martial charges? You really are insane, you know that Maris? This isn’t the fucking military. We’re terrorists, or have you not been keeping up with the NewsNet? What’s wrong?” She squinted at him. “Your nine-million-credit weapon malfunctioning on you? Didn’t expect her to think? S’pose you should’ve bought me a replacement brain too.”
“Risa…” Garrison reached for her arm. “Now is not the time to get into that.”
She stomped away, toward Garrison’s office. Three strides later, at the lack of footsteps behind her, she whirled. Maris’s eyeballs swelled from their sockets, covered with bright-red blood vessels. Garrison hadn’t taken a step.
“Fine.” Risa folded her arms. “We’ll do this right here then.” She pulled a thumbnail sized electronic device out of her weapon harness and threw it at Garrison. “UCF Military Intelligence is planning to destroy a civilian agricultural settlement, Arden, as a false flag operation. That neuro-stick has all the information if you don’t believe me.”
Garrison went pale… well, more pale than usual.
Maris calmed himself, glancing at the shorter man. “Colonel, do we have any assets in Arden?”
Garrison leaned over a terminal, which tinted his face azure. “One observer, a couple of bodies on the security force, and a set of eyes inside the company.”
“So less than six?” Maris frowned at the tactical map on the large, flat display table. “Which company was it again?”
“NuOrganix,” said Risa. “Losing that facility will create a food shortage in the UCF-controlled areas of Mars. Best-case scenario probably won’t see riots, but the youngest, the oldest, and the weakest will suffer the most. Worst-case scenario, we have food riots and the population tries to overthrow the government.”
Garrison plugged the neural memory stick into a console in the central holo-table. The feeble click thundered over the room. The area brightened as satellite reconnaissance, classified C-Branch documents, and even a personnel roster of the ‘assets’ chosen to perform the demolition work appeared on a number of floating holo-panels. Next to the faces, recent video captures taken from security cameras at the starport showed the moment each man disembarked from a commercial RedLink shuttle. He rubbed his chin at the five-to-ten-second video loops Raziel had chosen to best show the similarity to their military identification photo. No two arrived on the same day, all eight spaced out over the course of a month.
The detailed background files on the operatives got Maris to raise an eyebrow. “Where did you get all this information from, lieutenant? This has the appearance of highly classified C-Branch material. I have trouble believing it’s legitimate.”
“I don’t give a fuck if you think I’m Cat-6.” She put her hands on her hips. “An angel gave it to me.”
Maris leaned his weight on his fists. Pale cyan light from the war map cast his already dark face in stark shadow. “There’s no need to be alarmist. I highly doubt C-Branch would undertake an operation like that if they were not confident about the result. The all-out cave-in of society seems farfetched.” He glanced at Garrison. “Send a message. Quiet. No details. Tell our friends to get out and lay low for a while, just in case.”
Risa blinked. “That’s it? You’re pulling our assets? What about those people? We have to stop it!”
Maris remained statue still, save for his bulging eyes shifting toward her. “You’re already dangerously close to―”
“To what?” She yelled. “Insubordination? Show me my officer’s commission paperwork.” Her eyebrow climbed a half inch. “Oh, wait… That’s right. We’re not a legitimate military force. You want to cut me loose? You wanna kick me out? Go right the fuck ahead. You can’t charge me with shit, because this”―she waved around at the room―“is a joke. A goddamned sick joke. How can you tell us all we fight for the people of Mars? How can you ask us all to die for the ideal of a better life? How can you stand there, so imperiously offended that I refuse to acknowledge your dustblow rank, and have the balls to stand back and do nothing while a thousand people die for no other reason than to make this fucking joke look bad in the eyes of the very people we’re trying to help?”
Murmurs simmered in the shadows.
General Maris pushed away from the table, holding his hands up in a placating gesture. “Risa, you have to look at the big picture. This is a military intelligence operation. Top trained assets. Top-of-the-line gear. Top minds on military-grade cortical-boosters planning it. All the ‘heart’ in the world won’t make up for their advantages. I don’t want to lose anyone. We can’t stop this. All they’d need to do is find one real body they can connect back to the Front, and it would be ten times worse.” He sighed at the floor. “We can fight the propaganda war from the net, but out there, you kids would just get killed. If they can create a believable enough lie, it won’t matter one damn bit what really happened.”
Risa looked Garrison in the eye. “I can’t let those people die. I’m going.”
“No you’re not,” said Garrison, sounding too calm. “It’s too risky.”
“Someone has to!” she screamed. “We’re no better than they are if we let them murder civilians. Raziel said it was somehow all about money. If we stand for anything at all, I have to go out there.”
“Why are you yelling?”
The sound of Kree’s voice, still slurred from sleep, caused a lump to swell in Risa’s throat. The girl crept around the corner of the giant display table behind her, a head shorter than its top, rubbing her eyes.
“I suppose you’ll ignore me if I order you not to,” said Maris. “Take a good, long look at that face, and think about what it’ll look like when we tell her you’re not coming back. You remember how you felt when we told you about Genevieve.”
“What?” Kree’s face lit up with worry. She ran to Risa’s side. “Don’t go!”
Risa scooped the girl up, balancing her on one hip and staring death at Maris as Kree wailed and pulled on her. I can’t do this to her. Doubt swirled around for a moment as the child settled down and clung.
How many children live in Arden?
“I’m sorry. I have to stop this.” Risa squeezed the little body in her arms. “An angel’s watching over me. I know I’ll be safe.”
“Angel?” Kree stared at her, face stern save for the dribbling tears. “You’re too big for make-up friends.”
Unable to speak, Risa carried Kree back to her room and sat on her bed. She held the girl in silence for almost fifteen minutes before thinking her voice might work if she wanted it to.
“Why are you going away?” asked Kree.
Risa ruffled her hair. “I’m not going away for good.” I hope. “Bad people are going to hurt a lot of innocent people. I have to stop them.”
“I don’t want you to go.” Kree snuggled against her. “Stay here.”
“I want to.” She forced a wounded smile. Why did Raziel have to do this to me now? “I don’t want to go, but I can’t let those people die. If someone wanted to hurt you, I’d do everything I could to stop them.”
Kree grinned. “You stop bombs good.”
Tears ran free. I’ll never forgive myself for that. �
�I hope I’m good enough.” Risa pulled her tight into a hug.
The child’s eyebrows furrowed together. “You’re not my mommy.”
“Okay.” Risa squeezed the girl, her heart growing heavier.
yan light saturated the interior of a twelve-by-sixteen-foot hollow at the far end of Opportunity Alley, a little cyberware outlet that went by the name Augury. Rows of tiny shops lined both sides of a narrow passageway on the fourth level below the surface of Elysium City. Stagnant air laced with the reek of street meat, booze, and vomit assaulted her nose. Risa glided among the endless procession of bodies, careful to avoid being mistaken for, or victimized by, a pickpocket. People watched her on all sides, from where they leaned against walls and from the neon-filled passages that dissipated into darkness. She spotted fourteen but guessed at least twenty.
Opportunity my ass. More like opportunistic.
Anger kept her hands clenched. Kree’s shout kept replaying itself in her mind.
“You’re not my mommy.”
She knew the girl didn’t mean it like it sounded. It was a way of wishing Risa wouldn’t die―or so she hoped. Her rage wasn’t directed at the child for screaming, at Garrison for doing nothing at all, or at Maris for being an asshole.
Her anger had an unexpected target: Raziel.
Why did he have to choose her? She had never before questioned the motivations of enigmatic denizens of other planes. Then again, she had never before had anything worth losing. Risa ducked a swinging metal arm connected to a trench-coated man on his way out of Augury. He stumbled with the gait of someone with his mind far away in chem land―not a wonderful combination with a plastisteel limb. Inside the cramped cyberware shop, the fragrance of electronics and burned flesh lingered in the stagnant air.
Why did Raziel have to make her do this? He knew she’d have refused planting another bomb, or even spying. Risa had made up her mind. She wanted Pavo, not the MLF. For all the bad she’d done in her life, the least she could do was give Kree a home. Who are we to think we can do better? The UCF isn’t so horrible.
Hand of Raziel (Daughter of Mars Book 1) Page 38
