Starshine

by G. S. Jennsen

  Mia sighed in feigned drama. “I’ve learned by now with Caleb—it’s always short notice. But it’s no trouble. Very nice ship you have there. One of a kind, I’d wager.”

  “I’d like to think so.”

  “I’ve seen a lot of expensive ships pass through here. I suspect you are correct.” She gestured to several control panels along the wall. “If you’ll follow me, you can review our standard procedures and the special services we offer. I understand security is of utmost concern.”

  “It is.”

  Mia had clearly already surmised the ship was Alex’s baby, the extra measures he’d requested were on her account and when it came to the ship she was the one in charge. The ability to size up a customer and their proclivities in a matter of seconds was no doubt one reason she had done so well for herself.

  Satisfied things were on track to proceed relatively smoothly, he looked at Mia as they crossed the spacious bay together. The Class I bays were the largest and best-equipped offered, not merely by her but by anyone on Romane, and every aspect of it shone. “I don’t suppose you happened to bring my pack I left here?”

  “Please. It’s in my office.”

  Alex had dived into the information at the control center, quite intently so. He drew to her side and leaned in close. “The pack contains some personal weapons and tools—I’ve sort of scattered extras across the galaxy, I’m afraid. Once I grab it, I am going to go buy some clothes, because I’m sure you are beyond ready to see me in anything other than this shirt. It’s been a decent shirt, but I’m considering burning it.”

  She gave him a vague nod in response, her focus still on the details of the hangar bay. He looked over his shoulder. “Mia, after we run by your office can you come back and get Alex set up with what she needs?”

  Her expression veered dangerously close to a smirk. “I’d be happy to do so.”

  He leaned in yet closer, squeezed Alex’s hand and placed a delicate kiss at the base of her ear. It was important to him she feel comfortable in the situation, and know he was here for her and only her. “I’ll be back soon.”

  Her eyes cut up at him with a distracted glance. “Okay. Have fun.”

  Mia spun around as soon as the door to her office closed to stare at him in disbelief and perhaps dismay. “Caleb, darling, what have you gotten yourself into?”

  He crouched down beside the pack on the floor and unzipped it. He wasn’t afraid she had removed anything, but he needed to remind himself of its contents. “I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re referring to, Mia darling.”

  “Miriam Solovy’s daughter? Are you kidding me? I appreciate that you’re adventurous, but I didn’t think you were insane.”

  He chuckled darkly while he rummaged through the pack. “How the hell do you know who her mother is?”

  She glared at him as if insulted. “I’m paid very well to stay current on many details regarding the power players in this little galaxy of ours. And your girlfriend’s mother is one of them. You do realize you’re at war against the Alliance now, right?”

  He shrugged, zipped up the pack and stood. “Your point?”

  She stepped forward and grasped his hands in hers. “I have a soft spot for you, Caleb. I always have. I don’t want to see you get hurt.”

  He smiled. “They’ve already arrested me. What else can they do?”

  She didn’t. “They can kill you, for one.”

  “I’m much too good to let that happen. Don’t worry. We’ll be fine.”

  “We?” She dropped his hands and took a step back. “Oh my god, you’re in love with her.”

  He exhaled harshly—more harshly than he had intended. “Don’t be absurd. I—”

  “You are, you’re completely in love with her. I can’t believe I didn’t spot it immediately.” She laughed. “I never thought I’d see the day, Caleb Marano in love. She really must be something.”

  “Just stop, okay? You don’t know what you’re talking about.” She definitely did not know what she was talking about. How could she?

  She nodded dramatically, eyes wide in mocking. “Of course, my mistake. Whatever you say.”

  “Mia….”

  “No, I concede the point. You’re not in love. Silly of me to even suggest it. Now I’d better get out to the bay lest your girlfriend start suspecting we’re in here being bad.”

  He reached out and grabbed her arm as she turned to go. “Wait. We’re renting a ship to take to Seneca, and odds are we’ll be there a few days. There’s something else I need you to do for me while we’re gone. I’ll pay you whatever you need for it.”

  “Caleb, you know I never charge you.”

  “You haven’t heard what it is yet.”

  Mia returned, sans Caleb, after several minutes.

  She was rather beautiful, Alex thought. Objectively speaking. Of average height but with exquisite bone structure, her olive skin complimented vaguely Asian features. She carried herself with studied confidence, yet her eyes carried a hint of…Alex wasn’t sure. Roughness? Grittiness? Though she gave a flawless impression of it, the woman had not been born into wealth. Of that much Alex was certain.

  “How’s everything look?”

  “Excellent. You have a very sophisticated facility here. I must admit I’m impressed. But can we go over the additional security measures?”

  “Absolutely.” Mia opened a new display in one of the panels. “A cam monitors the door from the outside, which only I—and now you and Caleb—can access. As you see, this is the sole entrance to the bay except for airborne entry, but while the bay is occupied the force field is one-way. Your handprint here and this door becomes operable solely by you and I.”

  “And Caleb?”

  “Not until he gets back here with his handprint.”

  “Right. Can it be DNA-coded as well?”

  Mia raised an eyebrow but didn’t otherwise balk at the request. “It can.” Her fingertips manipulated the information on the screen, and a small drawer slid out from beneath the shelf. It held a brushed magnesium encoder.

  Alex recognized its purpose and pressed her palm to it. A faint tingle against her index finger indicated the extraction of her DNA signature.

  She glanced over at Mia, who was already pulling in the signature and configuring the door security. “So how did you meet Caleb?”

  The woman’s head tilted away as a guarded expression swept across her face.

  “I don’t mean to pry. If it’s personal—”

  “Sorry, gut reaction. My past isn’t a topic I make a habit of discussing. But hell, why not. It’s certainly been long enough.” She added a small smile. “In short, he saved me. I was in the forced employ of the Triene cartel on Pandora, where I had run after I got tired of my father and brother using me as a mule to fence stolen goods—most notably when the last ‘customer’ got it in his head to relieve me of both the goods and my life.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s fine. I stabbed him. I assume he died, but who knows. Unfortunately, I ended up in a situation which was little better. One day Caleb approached me seeking help to get inside the Triene compound. I agreed, and he gave me a ticket off-planet and some credits to get on my feet. He took the whole operation down, then checked up on me a while later. We became friends of a sort.”

  “Then more than friends.”

  “Ha…told you, did he?” She rolled her eyes and muttered something Alex couldn’t make out under her breath. “Don’t worry, it’s all far in the past. But he is my friend, and I owe him my life. So…be gentle with him.”

  “I hardly think Caleb needs anyone to be gentle with him.”

  “You might be surprised.” She transitioned the display to a new menu. “Here, we can also add a plasma cage around the docking area.” A tap and a field shimmered to life in a box two meters beyond the frame of the ship. “And now I’m linking it to you as well. You can activate and deactivate it from here.”

  Mia paused, the corners of her mouth
twitching. “What about you? How did you meet him?”

  Alex cleared her throat awkwardly. “I, uh, shot down his ship and stranded him on a hostile planet…then rescued him from it.”

  “Nice!” Mia laughed; it was surprisingly rich and sultry. “That explains it.”

  “Explains what?”

  “Why he’s so taken with you. Other than the obvious of course.”

  She felt a bit flustered. Gabbing like teenagers about a guy wasn’t an activity she commonly engaged in, or had honestly ever done—at least not with anyone other than Kennedy and even then only after several glasses of wine. “What do you mean?”

  Mia leaned against the shelf, crossing her arms over her chest and relaxing her bearing. “There’s something you need to understand about Caleb. He spends a lot of his time—professionally—manipulating people. Finding their weaknesses and exploiting them. He’s quite skilled at it, and it’s kind of affected his opinion of people in general. It’s not that he doesn’t appreciate them—I suspect he’s rather fond of humanity as a rule—but it of necessity puts him somewhat apart and above most of them.”

  She chuckled, seemingly to herself. “Very few individuals truly impress him, and the ones who do are unfailingly strong, independent and resourceful. And should someone actually get the better of him, well he’d be smitten for sure.”

  “Smitten?”

  A mysterious grin grew on Mia’s lips, as if she knew a secret and intended on keeping it. Okay, that was annoying. “Smitten.” She pushed off the shelf and focused back on the display. “Any particular name you want the rental under?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Caleb said you’d be wanting the records doctored. I can choose a name at random, or one of the many corps, but I thought I’d give you the option.”

  Ever the spy…but he was right. A false name would make the ship more secure, especially should her hijinks at the detention center garner attention. “It’s an excellent idea, but I’ll let you choose. I’m not much with the spy games.”

  “Stick with him, and you will be.”

  “Everything go okay with Mia?”

  “Hmm? Yeah, it went fine.” She was preoccupied when she glanced up at him, but she had to smile at the new clothes. He wore charcoal casual slacks and a deep navy shirt unbuttoned over a tee of matching hue. The bag in his hand indicated there were more where these came from.

  She wouldn’t have thought it possible, but the choice of color made his eyes appear an even richer blue. “I like.”

  He dropped the bag on the floor and joined her on the couch. “Good. Something going on?”

  “I’m not sure.” She sent the message she had been staring at to an aural. “This came in a few minutes ago.”

  Ms. Solovy,

  With respect to the proposed renovations to your residence, we have attached draft plans based on your specifications. Please review the changes and additions. We hope they meet with your approval.

  Regards,

  — W. C. Sutton Construction, Inc.

  “W. C. Sutton is Will’s firm…but I’m not doing any renovations to the loft.”

  “Who’s Will?”

  “Richard’s husband. Might as well take a look at the plans.” The attachment opened to display, as advertised, a blueprint of the layout of her loft. A series of alterations were marked in green. They included the addition of marble flooring to the entrance and dining area, an extension of the kitchen another meter and a half, new windows and an additional closet on the back wall of the elevated sleeping area.

  “This is weird. I’ve never discussed the possibility of working on the loft with him. His expertise is large commercial projects, anyway.”

  “What’s up with the windows? They look odd.”

  She zoomed in on the specs running along the side of the aural. “It says they’re beveled…which is absurd. Who would put in beveled windows? They would totally obscure the view—and the view is the entire point of the windows.”

  “Well, either your friend Will isn’t much of an architect, or…hang on a second. Select the center window.”

  The remainder of the blueprint blurred into the background as the center window came into focus. It consisted of a pattern of several dozen small beveled squares.

  “There.” He pointed to one of the squares in the lower left quadrant of the window. Now that she examined it, it did seem to contain a more intricate pattern than the others. She selected it, and the square enlarged to dominate the aural.

  The pattern inside consisted of an ornamental capital ‘A.’

  “That’s what I thought. It’s a hidden message for you.” She looked over quizzically; he shrugged in response. “Spy trick. You should open it.”

  “Right….” She raised an eyebrow at the image and tapped the ‘A.’ A dialog opened over it:

  What was the title and composer of David Solovy’s favorite musical piece?

  A wistful smile tugged at her lips as she input the answer:

  Capriccio Italien, Op. 45 by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

  A file popped out of the blueprint to hover in the air.

  Autopsy Reports: Mangele Santiagar. September 15, 2322

  She laughed in delight and sank against the cushion. “Crafty bastard. I knew I could count on him.”

  Caleb grasped her face in his hands and drew her in for a long, languorous kiss. He tasted of butter and caramel coffee. Delicious.

  “You. Are. Wonderful.”

  “Little bit, yeah.” She kissed him again before pulling back. “I talked to him after you were arrested. I told him about our suspicions and the information you were hoping for, but he said there was nothing he could do to help.”

  “Looks like he had a change of heart—unless this Will guy heard about your conversation and accessed the file himself.”

  “No. He’s a construction project manager, not a spy. Besides, they’re very close. This is Richard’s doing. Here, let me send the file to you.”

  He rested his elbows on his knees and took a moment to study it. “The information’s quite detailed, so hopefully it includes a key to breaking this whole mess open. But it’s got Alliance security written all over it—no way will it pass through the defense net. We’ll have to deliver it in person. Which is fine, because we can be in Cavare tonight.”

  He grinned at her, clearly pleased with the turn of events. “Let’s go rent ourselves a ship.”

  55

  NEW BABEL

  Independent Colony

  * * *

  Olivia smiled to herself as she toured the newly claimed facility, though she never allowed it to reach her lips. Outwardly she appeared stoically critical and discerning, inspecting every surface and corner for mistakes, flaws or merely a lack of optimization.

  She gestured to a series of narrow slits running along the top of the right wall. “Replace those cooling vents. We have access to newer material at half cost. And make certain to get the correct grade for this type of production.”

  The manufacturing facility had been ‘liberated’ from the Shào cartel two days earlier, cleaned up overnight and the necessary renovations were now nearly complete. This particular location would increase her supply flow of illegal cybernetic enhancements—vision and reflex enhancers, body state interpreters, sleep deprivation modulators and cyberization overclocks, to name a few—all hyper-concentrated and boosted well beyond safe limits and all carrying a decent risk of blindness, muscular detachment or even catastrophic neural stroke.

  It had been a good decision on her part to take what she needed rather than expend the time and effort to build a new plant. The war was heating up in earnest, and they were already seeing a noticeable uptick in demand for the sort of enhancements the plant would fabricate. Everyone wanted to gain an advantage in the rising chaos generated by the war; she was happy to supply them with the necessary tools to do so in whatever manner they saw fit.

  She took a last look around the long rectangular chamber. Worke
rs busily installed equipment on the primary production floor. Crates filled with components lined the walls, in many cases stacked almost to the ceiling. Enforcers guarded every door, inside and out; more stood watch in a hundred meter perimeter. Shào wasn’t some street gang, and she didn’t expect they would take the seizure of their property particularly well. There would be repercussions, but nothing her people couldn’t handle.

  “I’ve seen enough. Carry on. Contact me if you encounter any last-minute difficulties.” She nodded to Gesson and headed for the lift to the roof, entourage in tow.

  The muggy blue haze of a New Babel morning greeted her as she strode across the roof to her transport. She had a dinner date with the CEO of a pharmaceutical corporation, one who had displayed a degree of moral flexibility when it came to his business endeavors.

  For the right price, she was confident he could be convinced to provide her the ingredients she required. Once combined with other ingredients from other pharmaceutical companies, legitimate and otherwise, the result would be a new variety of high-potency chimerals for the market, available exclusively through the Zelones cartel.

  In the midst of the war, when death and destruction abounded, people inevitably sought a way to escape from it all. Yet another avenue of opportunity opening up thanks to the predictable incompetence and reactionary behavior of politicians.

  That and a few well-placed missiles.

  The colonized worlds which called themselves civilization represented a powder keg lying dormant for far too long. Apply the right amount of pressure and it would erupt into chaos. She could feel the galaxy beginning to convulse.

  The transport rose above the industrial area and banked toward the spaceport. The pharmaceutical executive didn’t dare risk being seen on New Babel, of course, so she was doing him the tremendous favor of traveling to Atlantis for the dinner. A one-time concession—but one time was generally all that was required.

  An incoming message captured her attention as she was about to begin reviewing new cost analyses. On opening it her expression darkened to a scowl.