Running Start

by J. A. Sutherland

  She stripped out of her orange clothes — all of them, Mason noted, even the ugly, threadbare bra and panties. He also noted that what was left wasn’t at all ugly. Pretty nice in fact.

  He felt his face start to burn and turned his back before she could catch him staring at her. Maybe she was used to people looking, having been in Bright Horizons for three years, but he wasn’t used to doing the looking.

  There was a rustle as she picked up her bag and Mason realized he could still see her reflected in the capsule’s windows and from there onto the control consoles. There didn’t seem to be anywhere he could look — it was like she was everywhere. No matter where he looked, there were a dozen little Fuenteses pulling clothes out of her bag; pulling on panties that were a lot skimpier than she’d taken off and not orange, these were a sort of pale blue; reaching behind her to clip a bra, the same blue; pulling on a short, leather skirt that barely covered anything, and a matching — Mason, wasn’t sure what it was called, but it was more like a leather bra than anything else, and it was hardly larger than the blue bra. Finally she put on a leather jacket that at least covered her — except that she left it open so —

  “Hey, get changed! We’ll be there in a few minutes!”

  Mason flushed and swallowed hard, wondering where in the small capsule he could go to change that she wouldn’t see him. The last thing he needed right now was for Fuentes to see him naked — not after the effect seeing her had on him.

  “Ah —”

  Fuentes snorted and came forward. She carried a pair of boots from the now empty bag, tossed them in one of the front seats, then snatched Mason’s bag from him. She pulled an explant from the bag and smacked the bag back into his chest.

  “Damn, your face is red. Change in the back,” she said. “Like I care about seeing your pasty white ass.” She flopped into the console seat again, one leg thrown over the seat’s arm. “Or anything else for that matter.”

  Mason ducked his head and scurried to the back. If nothing else, her words had pretty much deflated the biggest embarrassment he had about changing in front of her.

  The bag held clothes and not much else after she’d taken the explant. He guessed the guy — Toure, the front of the bag said — hadn’t had much when he was picked up. He pulled them out and held them up in front of him. They’d probably fit — the jeans would be tight and the shirt loose, Toure was apparently thinner and worked out more than he did. He hoped the guy wouldn’t be too mad when he was let out and they didn’t have his clothes for him.

  Mason stripped, ducking down behind the seats and keeping an eye on the capsule’s front to be sure Fuentes didn’t turn around.

  All he could see of her was her leg, bare and draped over the seat arm. She had her toes pointed and was waving her foot around idly.

  That made Mason glad he was at the back behind the seats.

  Rosa tucked the explant’s bud behind her ear.

  She’d wipe that for the kid, saving a stop and an expense to get him one. Toure would never miss it, since the guards had tossed him down a flight of stairs and he was hooked up to machines now until the last organ match was made and they turned off his empty husk. The most he’d ever say in complaint was beep-beep-beep.

  Her face stretched in a grin while Seymour worked on the explant.

  She was out — out, out, out!

  Out and free with a billion plus in off-world accounts — by now the credits would have been moved by her agents over and over again until they wound up in a Mars First account. Mars First would tell anyone inquiring about it to go suck vacuum — they prided themselves on their discretion and their founder was one of the original Mars freedom fighters in the Indian sector. If anyone on Earth complained about their account being hacked and transferred there, Mars First would answer with a list of security experts and a suggestion they do better next time.

  Her grin widened. Out, rich, and — she ran her hands over her jacket — damn, but properly dressed for the first time in three years. The only thing that would make it better would be if she’d had a chance to shower and sluice the stench of Bright Hors off her before dressing.

  She did need to do some shopping, though. New underwear, for sure — the baby blue did not go with her outfit. She’d been half-dressed in the stuff she wore around her foster parents when the flashies came for her and she’d had just time enough to grab the nearest clothes as she went out the window and down the fire escape. Everything was too small after three years, anyway — her figure had changed a bit since seventeen. The panties were chafing, the bra was too tight, though that did add to the cleavage, and she couldn’t get the jacket all the way closed. She checked her total again — yeah … a billion credits would buy a very nice wardrobe. She rolled the word around her mouth, not saying it, but just pursing her lips to make the B — billion, billion, buh-illion!

  She chuckled at the kid’s reaction to her changing clothes. She looked good and she knew it — she’d toned that down in Bright Hors, way down, because there wasn’t anyone there she wanted looking, but now …

  Out, rich, and good-looking — things are looking up.

  Capsule sensors provide a view forward and backward in the tube, Miss Fuentes. I am afraid I cannot tell you what is above us.

  Rosa sighed.

  The crazy implant was a problem, but she could deal with that later.

  The explant has been reset to factory defaults, Miss Fuentes.

  Thanks, Seymour.

  She stood and plucked the bud from her ear.

  The kid was dressed. He didn’t look half-bad, either — she hadn’t expected Toure to have good taste in clothes. He, the kid, could stand to lose a few pounds and work out some, but the shaggy hair and puppy dog eyes were cool if you liked that sort of thing.

  She handed him the explant.

  “Here, put that on, there should be a screen in the bud — it’s reset, but don’t run through setup yet. We don’t have time.”

  He took it, but looked at it weird, then slipped the screen from the back of the earbud and into his right eye.

  “I feel kind of bad taking someone’s explant, though,” he said. “Clothes are one thing, but what’s he going to do about his files and stuff when he gets out, I mean —”

  “Toure’s dead,” Rosa told him. “Or will be as soon as some uppies need … a kidney and a lung, last I heard, anyway.”

  She went back to the compartment with the bags of personal items and grabbed two more. She tossed one to the kid.

  “Put your Bright Hors stuff in that,” she said, “and move what’s in it now to Toure’s bag.”

  “What?”

  She sighed. The kid had no clue at all, really.

  “Look, when they find this capsule, they’re going to find these bags. So they know what everybody came in with — there’s a log of what Toure was wearing, right? So you put your stuff in that bag, we take Toure’s bag with us and dump it somewhere else. Then they find the capsule and your orange shit in …” She moved the edge of the bag so she could read the name. “… Tam’s bag. Then the alert goes out that you’re wearing Tam’s shit, not Toure’s. Do you get it?”

  The kid nodded.

  “Good. It’s not much, but anything helps.”

  She folded up the bag with her name on it and filled it with the contents of another bag, leaving the new one behind.

  “What’s next?” the kid asked.

  “The capsule’s stopping in a few minutes and we’re getting off. The capsule’ll take off again — I set it to head for Rio with a few stops along the way. They won’t know where we got off and probably won’t think we got off at the first stop. I’ve got a ride there — we’ll get your new ID, then you’re on your own.”

  Rosa watched the kid swallow and look away.

  Jesus, he’ll probably head straight for home and be back in Bright Hors before chow tonight. The little dumbass.

  Eleven

  The next few hours were as confusing for Mason as his a
rrest had been.

  Fuentes dragged him off the capsule at the first stop, a middling-size intraplanetary port in the suburbs, he didn’t even have time to figure out what city they were in. They dumped their bags of clothes in the first recycler they found, and followed a crowd of arriving passengers until they found the rental agencies.

  She led him past the lines to some sort of VIP pickup and straight over to a hoverbike.

  “Oh, Seymour, you done good,” she murmured as she ran a fingertip over the bike’s frame.

  It was all black and combined curves and angles to give the impression it was already blasting through the air while sitting there still. The fan cowlings hid the pair of multi-bladed fans that gave it lift, with screens on top and bottom to keep debris from getting to them — and arms and legs, Mason hoped. He’d never ridden a hoverbike before.

  Fuentes straddled the bike and grasped the controls, hiking her skirt up even farther, something he wouldn’t have believed was possible. The leather of her boots creaked as she set her feet on the pegs.

  “Get on,” she said.

  Mason hesitated. He’d never been in a private car — except the one the flashies used to take him to jail — much less a bike. He’d only ever seen two — both stolen from higher levels and brought back down to the streets to show off or be chopped up for parts. One of those had been made into parts by a gang member who’d never driven one before … he’d become parts, too. All over the street.

  “Aren’t those dangerous?” he asked.

  “For fuck’s sake, get on! Or I’ll leave you here!”

  Mason jumped and clambered on behind her. He didn’t think she actually would leave him, at least not here — she’d want to dump him where there wouldn’t be a trail to her escape route. In fact, she’d probably want to make it so he couldn’t tell anyone anything about her escape, wouldn’t she? And wouldn’t tossing him off a hoverbike at a few hundred meters accomplish that just fine?

  The bike jerked under him and rose into the air.

  “Hang on!” Fuentes called.

  Mason’s hands searched for something to grab, but she had the controls and there were no —

  “Dumbass!” Fuentes yelled.

  She took her hands off the controls for a second — which Mason didn’t think was a very smart thing to do, as they were rising quickly and starting to move forward, too — and reached back. She grabbed his wrists and yanked him forward to press tightly against her back, then wrapped his arms around her waist.

  “Now, hang on and lean when I do!” she called. “You’ll get it in a minute —” She laughed. “— it’s just like sex!”

  Her hands went back to the controls and Mason found his hands pressed against her bare skin under her still open jacket. She didn’t seem to care about the wind that made it past the windscreen.

  She put the bike into a tight turn that Mason was sure would kill them because he could look to the side and see the ground, then righted it and they tilted forward to accelerate quickly — too quickly. Far too quickly for Mason’s taste, as they were headed for the space between two buildings. Maybe it was a road on the ground, but up here, as fast as they were moving, and with nothing between him and the walls but … nothing — it was far too fast and they were going to die all scraped to paste along the tower’s walls.

  Mason clenched his eyes shut and grabbed Fuentes harder, which only made her laugh and tilt the bike even more forward so their speed increased.

  The bike’s fans and the wind warred for which was loudest. His cheek was pressed against the leather of her jacket, his hands were gripping her bare skin where her jacket was open, and he was pressed tightly, from his knees up, against her, feeling every move she made to guide the bike.

  He opened his eyes a little and looked around. He supposed there were worse ways to go.

  Rosa drove the hoverbike hard, setting it on edge around corners and letting momentum keep it in the air before swinging the fans horizontal again using both the controls and her weight.

  Behind her, the kid kept shifting around unexpectedly and he wasn’t moving with her like he should, but she could compensate for that.

  The wind cut at her exposed skin, but it was a glorious feeling after being cooped up for three years. Every bit of it felt like freedom.

  She took the bike deeper into the city and away from the port — keeping it low instead of heading up to the mids and the clearer path there like the control’s navigation app would have advised.

  It was still early morning, not yet dawn, but things seemed to get darker. There were fewer lights and the buildings seemed closer the farther they went. The overheads became more and more frequent until they were well into the lowlies and the sky wasn’t visible at all, only the lights, flickering and mostly absent, in the overheads. The bike’s headlight illuminated the path ahead, giving Rosa just enough time to slide over or under the occasional cable stretched from one building to another.

  She followed the map projected on her right eye instead of the bike’s navscreen. In fact, the navscreen’s location service as well as tracking were shut down. Seymour handled that, surprising her, because it was done almost as soon as she’d started the bike. She’d been about to tell it to when she noticed that it had control of the nav, tracking, and even the bike’s transponder — basically anything the bike transmitted. That was a bit of initiative she didn’t expect from a plant — the thing kept surprising her. It’d done the same with the bike rental itself — she told it to have a hoverbike reserved and expected some economy model, not the monster she straddled now.

  A few more turns, then they had a long straightaway and she opened the bike up, taking it down low to only a few meters above the street. The flashies wouldn’t care about what happened there at night — probably wouldn’t even come out for a call unless they could get enough backup. They’d respond come morning and clean up the mess, at most. So she was free to go as fast as she dared and kept the bike right on the very edge of stalling forward, trading lift for speed.

  Then she waited for the last second before the final turn and pulled it back, rearing like horses did in an old vidshow and letting it slip down as the lift stalled.

  She grinned at the feel of the kid’s hands clutching at her, desperate not to fall off the back of the bike.

  Rosa side-slipped the stall to turn the bike and recover its lift barely a meter off the street and lined up for the turn into an alleyway, then sent it forward again.

  She flared and set it down in the alleyway.

  The bike’s fans spun down and she gave it a fond pat.

  “Off,” she told the kid.

  He slid off the back, staggering and picking his feet up to avoid putting one through the cowling — that would be a mess. She swung her own leg over and stepped back.

  “Where’d you learn to drive like that?” the kid asked.

  Rosa brushed her hair back, pulling at the tangles.

  “I’ve been riding since I was ten,” she said, thinking of all the different bikes and how she’d got them. That was one thing she’d miss once she left planet — the hoverbikes wouldn’t work in vacuum, after all. They would on Mars, but not like this — the atmosphere was too thin still. “People shouldn’t leave their toys out if they want to keep them.”

  Twelve

  Mason followed Fuentes to the only door in the alley that had a light above it. The door was steel, with a wide, steel jamb set into the brick of the building. The light had a steel cage around it. Both were scarred and dented, as though someone — several someones, several times — had tried to break in.

  Fuentes pounded on the door and squinted up at the light.

  After a few minutes, the door swung in and fat guy with glasses peered out, squinting. Mason wondered at the glasses — most people, even lowlies, had corrections done as part of their stipend.

  The guy frowned at Mason, smiled at Fuentes, and nodded his head at the bike.

  “Parts?” he asked.


  “I’m keeping it a while,” Fuentes said.

  “What about him?”

  “He’s not parts either.”

  “Then I hope you got cash.”

  The guy backed away and motioned them in, but Mason hesitated. The parts-comment didn’t sit well with him.

  Fuentes grabbed his arm as she passed, dragging him along. The door shut behind them with a heavy clang and a series of sharp clicks as locks were set.

  “We need IDs,” Fuentes said.

  “You got cash?”

  “Schena, come on, it’s me —”

  “Last I heard, you got sent up, so do you have cash?” the guy, Schena, asked, then leered at her, his eyes big behind the thick lenses, then licked his lips. “We can work something out if you don’t have it.”

  “In your dreams —”

  “Frequently, and at length, little Rosa.”

  Fuentes sighed. “You’ve been trying to get into my pants since I was twelve, Schena — what’s it ever gotten you?”

  Schena frowned. “Sutures? But I’m persistent.”

  “You’re a slow learner. IDs, now.”

  “Cash or trade?”

  “Mars First credits — direct transfer.”

  Now Schena grinned. “Nice,” he said, drawing the word out and nodding along. He gestured for them to follow and went down the hallway to some stairs and down toward a basement.

  “Two?” he asked. “You picking up strays?”

  “I owe him for something,” Fuentes said. “Just do it.”

  Mason followed along, wondering at their banter. Despite the content, it confused him, because he’d never been able to talk so free and easy. Mostly anything that wasn’t a direct question with one answer wound up with him asking, “What?” or the other person angry with him.

  Downstairs, the basement was a cluttered obstacle course of tables and crates, covered and overflowing with circuit boards and boxes of equipment. His steps slowed as he entered and he started looking at things closer, wondering what a particular board was for and seeing what another device might need to get it working. He stopped near one and frowned, looking around for the parts he’d need to —