Running Start

by J. A. Sutherland

  The kid shot her a hurt look, but she ignored it. It was a legitimate question.

  “For two people who just met, you work well as a team — and you give a shit what happens to him or you wouldn’t have gone back to get him on Earth. That gives me more leverage over you, since you don’t seem to have any family.” He sighed. “Things are always so much easier when there’s a family … but, I got his, so we’re probably going to be okay. Besides, he’s got some potential too.” He turned to look at the kid. “I watched the tape from the elevator — that was quick thinking.” Stenner glanced at Rosa. “Nice tits, by the way.”

  “Thanks?” Guthrie muttered.

  Rosa crossed her arms over her chest.

  “So,” Stenner said, “you give the money back, do the job, and all is … well, not forgiven, but let’s just say the debt’s being repaid, shall we? You even get paid for the job.”

  “What’s the job?” Rosa asked.

  “I’ll give you the details later, but, long story short, it’s a simple grab of some data. Guy in the Belt has some information we want. You go in, ice his system, get out and transfer the data back to me — easy-peasy.”

  Rosa doubted that — she doubted it a lot. The high priority Stenner’d said the job had and his reaction to it said otherwise.

  “If it’s so easy, why do you need us?”

  “Oh, look who’s top of the line now,” Stenner laughed. “Just because I’m impressed by your little stunt at the reformatory, don’t go thinking you’re Miss Hot-shit. You have potential, Fuentes, potential. Call this job a test — something easy to see what you can do.”

  Rosa frowned, but that did make a little sense at least.

  “Who’s the mark?”

  Stenner shrugged. “Some guy named Prabal Chhabra — two aitches, but I think you only pronounce one. Who the hell knows? He’s got his own rock near the Indo-Chinese border — but far enough away from the hot-zones that nobody bothers him.”

  That was probably a problem, but Rosa didn’t really know enough to be sure. She knew that the Indians and the Chinese had been killing each other off in the belt for decades, but didn’t know why or how big a problem it was. There were, like, ten-second comments about it in the news that she’d overheard once in a while.

  The bigger problem, though, was that it was the Belt at all.

  “How are we supposed to get to the Belt?” she asked.

  Stenner shrugged again. “Not my problem. You figure it out.”

  Thirty-Six

  “He’s a fucking pirate!” Fuentes yelled again.

  Mason thought she was pretty close to throwing something.

  “You said that already,” he pointed out.

  “No, you don’t get it,” she said. “He’s, like, an honest-to-god, attacks people’s ships and kills them all, pirate.”

  Mason nodded. He was reading the same thing on his explant — though apparently his was way slower at searches than Fuentes’ was.

  Prabal Chhabra was some kind of asteroid pirate king or something. He got his start during one of the Indo-Chinese conflicts in the Belt as an officer on an Indian frigate. The captain was killed — details on how were a little sketchy — and Chhabra took command. But instead of fighting the Chinese naval forces, he started attacking their merchant shipping and outposts. Which gave him a lot of things — a bunch of ships, a bunch of cargo, and a bunch of Chinese merchant spacers as prisoners.

  Now, what he was supposed to do was turn all that over to the Indian authorities in the Belt — his superiors, the ones who owned the frigate and gave Chhabra orders.

  What he did was sell about half the ships and all of the cargoes — the Belt needed constant resupply, so most outposts would buy anything that came their way, no questions asked. If the cargo happened to be a load of Belt resources, they didn’t ask questions, they just paid less than they could get selling the stuff themselves and claimed they’d mined the load.

  Then he bought arms for the half of the ships he kept.

  And then he offered his Chinese captives a choice — not “join or die,” which would have first occurred to most people, but “join and kill one of the other captives from your ship to prove your loyalty, or die.” The crew of his own ship had already been weeded down to those loyal to him, and those who were left were as guilty of piracy and murder as Chhabra was, so there was no going back for them.

  He got several fully crewed ships out of the offer, newly armed and armored, and set himself up as “king” of a rock floating around in the middle of nowhere — but even a rock in the middle of nowhere can be made pretty nice if you steal enough.

  Now he was de facto king of a hefty bit of space, where neither the Indians nor Chinese were willing to spend the effort to dislodge him. He had too many ships and didn’t disrupt trade quite enough to warrant going to war with him, when they were already at war with each other. That Chhabra also did odd jobs for both sides probably weighed in their decision as well.

  “There’s no way,” Fuentes was saying.

  Mason looked up, drawn out of his thoughts — that was annoying. He’d been following a train of thought — something about Chhabra that seemed familiar, almost. Now he’d lost it.

  He did know that doing this job, working for Stenner, was the only way they had to keep both his mom and themselves safe. Fuentes’ idea of moving the money around and giving most of it back while getting away was … crap. Stenner’d as much as said that’s what he expected them to try and he’d be ready for it. This offer was the best they’d get.

  He watched Fuentes pace around the suite for a few minutes and considered heading to his bedroom to think, but he liked it out here. Bedrooms were for sleeping and if he went in there, he’d fall asleep before he could regain the thread he’d been tugging at.

  “Why don’t you go take a bath?” he said.

  Fuentes stopped her pacing and stared at him.

  “What?”

  “A bath,” Mason said. “You seemed to feel better after you took a bath when we got here, and again after you peed on —”

  “That was the beer!”

  “So don’t drink so much and you won’t —”

  “I didn’t!”

  “You had an idea after your bath last time, so why don’t you go do that again? Maybe you’ll think of something.”

  “Kid, I don’t —”

  “My name’s Mason.”

  “What?”

  “My name’s Mason,” he repeated. “You can call me that, if you want to.”

  Fuentes stared at him.

  He wasn’t sure why he’d picked just then to tell her that. He’d like to tell her flat out to stop calling him “kid,” but didn’t want to make her angry. He just wanted some time alone to think. He ran his hands through his hair to steady himself.

  The kid … Mason … whatever, he ran his hands through his hair again and it spread out from his head with stray tendrils going every which way.

  Rosa wanted to yell at him for being way too calm about their situation. And for suggesting she go take a bath, like it was unreasonable for her to stress out about it. And she wanted to grab his head and smooth his goddamned hair back into place, because it was driving her nuts like that. And thinking about that last urge made her want to grab some other things of his and take care of what else was driving her nuts.

  “I’m going to take a bath,” she said instead.

  She grabbed two beers from the cooler — thought better of it and tucked those under her arm to grab three more — then kicked her bedroom door closed hard.

  The tub took only a few minutes to fill with hot water and she dumped a bunch of stuff from the jars on a ledge nearby in without bothering to look. The water bubbled and frothed while she stripped out of her clothes and climbed in, the first of her beers open and on the tub’s edge.

  The water eased up over her and she had to admit she felt better already. At least she could die clean and relaxed when they told Stenner there was no fucki
ng way they were going to the Belt. Maybe she could drink enough to fall asleep in the bath and drown — there were worse ways to go than in a bubble bath at the Waldorf Orbital.

  The water relaxed her and she was almost ready to crack another beer when her damn plant decided to spout off in her ear.

  “There are alternatives to at least one of your frustrations, Miss Fuentes, if Mason Oliver Guthrie continues to prove unwilling to cooperate.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I have taken the liberty of scanning station advertisements and have found seventeen providers who seem to meet your criteria.”

  Ads started scrolling across her vision — all with pictures of half- and, sometimes, fully-naked men.

  “What the fu — Seymour, what are you doing looking at ads for hookers?”

  “Part of my programming is to anticipate your needs and offer suggestions. I have noted that you spend an inordinate amount of time in fantasizing about this subject — fifty-three point four percent more time since leaving Bright Horizons than during your incarceration there.”

  The plant was keeping track of her fantasies? How was it even doing that? It shouldn’t be able to see things like that at all.

  “I have especially noted that these thoughts have tended to focus almost exclusively on images of Mason Oliver Guthrie and have tried to provide advertisements which meet that criteria — it was difficult, as most of those in this line of work appear to be more muscular than your preference.”

  “The kid is not my preference!”

  Her damn plant, for once, was silent.

  “He’s not! I like muscles — big ones!”

  “I can only act with the data available to me, Miss Fuentes.”

  “The data — Seymour, you stay the hell out of my head when I’m …” She couldn’t, not even. “Ew! Just … ew!” She drained her beer and held the bottle up so the plant could see it through her eyes. “If you don’t stay out of my head when I’m … fucking ew! I’ll shove this bottle in my ear and dig you out of there myself!”

  “I will make a note not to observe those images, no matter how vividly you project them, Miss Fuentes.”

  “Vivid — leave me alone for a while, Seymour!”

  Rosa took the silence to mean the plant was leaving her alone. She grabbed another beer and hit the button for the tub’s jets, letting the rushing water try to ease some of the knots in her back. The plant was right — she had been thinking about the kid a lot. And not just when she — ew!

  She was going to have to do some serious looking into top-of-the-line implants and how integrated they were supposed to be, because she couldn’t imagine that the Seymour’s being able to access thoughts like that was normal.

  Once Fuentes slammed her door, Mason got himself a soda and a plate of cookies, then settled into a chair by the window. There was some yelling, but he couldn’t make out the words and assumed Fuentes was just venting some frustrations or something. He ignored her and started rereading the information on Chhabra.

  The situation made his head feel like it did when he was fixing something, and he thought that might be sort of what he had to do. Figure out how to fix his life. Put things back the way they were supposed to be, so that everything would work and it wasn’t all broken anymore.

  But that wasn’t right either.

  The way it had been — that would be him in school and coming home to his mom every day. That wasn’t going to be possible to get back to; it was gone forever. Besides, that would mean Fuentes was somewhere else and he didn’t want that.

  So … his mom safe. Him and Fuentes safe and together. Not on the run and not broke, either, because he was pretty sure he wouldn’t like Fuentes broke — she’d probably be all right without the Waldorf and fancy shopping all the time, but really broke would make her miserable. A rich, happy Fuentes was tough enough to live with — a broke, miserable one was something he didn’t like thinking about.

  Free of Perigree would be nice, but that was probably a much bigger problem than he could fix right now. Like the difference between Mrs. Little’s apartment having no power versus the whole tower — he could fix one, but not the other. So leave Perigree for now — they’d have to work for Stenner.

  Which meant dong this job and stealing some data from Chhabra.

  What would that look like? To fix his life he had to get into Chhabra’s asteroid and help Fuentes steal the data.

  No … that wasn’t right. He was looking at it backwards.

  Chhabra had to have a reason to let them in and not kill them.

  That was the part that was broken.

  Chhabra was broken and Mason had to fix him.

  He reviewed all the data he could find on the pirate king.

  What was wrong with Chhabra’s life — what did he want that he didn’t have?

  And how were he and Fuentes the tools that could fix it?

  He wasn’t sure how long he sat there, but when he blinked and looked around he had the solution and Fuentes was in one of the other chairs. She hadn’t bothered him, just sat down and nursed a beer watching Earth spin by over and over. She was in one of the Waldorf’s bathrobes again — loosely tied this time and it hung open as she reached for her beer.

  A lot of beers, he saw, not bothering to count the bottles on the table beside her.

  She must have been waiting for him to move, because as soon as he looked over, she spoke.

  “You were right, I feel better,” she said.

  “Good.”

  “You okay? You were sitting there a long time.”

  “I was thinking about things.”

  “Pretty deep thinking. You wouldn’t answer me.”

  “I’m sorry — I do that sometimes. I can’t help it.”

  Fuentes nodded. “It’s okay.” She got up and went to the cooler, then came back and set a soda on the table beside him.

  “Thanks.”

  Fuentes walked to the window and looked out at the stars.

  “I feel a lot better, and I was thinking about things too,” she said. “Tomorrow’s going to be pretty rough, I think, and I was wondering if … well —”

  She turned from the window and he saw that she’d undone the robe’s belt so that it hung open and loose. It still covered her breasts, but he could see her skin from neck all the way down to —

  Mason’s throat closed up and he felt like someone put his head in a vise. His whole body tensed. Why’d she do that? He looked out the window, then quickly back, his first thought that she was flashing someone in the next ring not really mattering to him once he realized checking that would mean missing seeing things himself.

  “We’ve got time tonight, before things fall apart more,” Fuentes said.

  She moved toward him, the robe swinging open and closed, and it felt like his face was trembling.

  “IknowhowwecangetChhabra!”

  Thirty-Seven

  This time Stenner came to the suite for the meeting.

  Frederick approved only because, as he said, “Should the gentleman prove untoward, he’ll at least not make the lift after.”

  Mason sort of pictured the butler spending the next hour with his finger on the button for the laser turrets in the hallway. It comforted him a lot more than it should and that disturbed him in different ways.

  In four days I’ve gone from coming home after school to hoping a butler will be able to waste a guy if he kills me in a thirty-thousand a night hotel suite … in space.

  There were too many changes going on and he couldn’t keep up. What he really wanted to do was crawl into bed and sleep for a week — maybe wake up and find out this had all been some really weird dream.

  Well, not all of it a dream, if he had a choice.

  Fuentes went to the door to answer the chime. She was wearing her new purple leathers with a sheer, white shirt that showed glimpses of her darker skin when the jacket fell open and the shirt pressed tight. Which it did a lot — she had a way of moving that h
ad the unzipped jacket always being pushed back on one side by her arms. That pressed the shirt against things and made it hard for Mason to concentrate — mostly because it brought back memories of her in the bathrobe last night.

  The more he thought about it, the more sure he was that he’d told her he knew how they could get into Chhabra’s base at … the worst possible moment. After he said it, Fuentes had changed from … whatever it was she’d been doing to all business, pulling her robe tight, belting it, and sitting down to listen intently while he explained. He couldn’t help thinking about what might have happened if he’d kept his mouth shut just a minute longer.

  He should be thinking about Stenner now, he knew, and his mom, and getting killed pretty soon by Prabal Chhabra — which he was pretty sure was what was going to happen, no matter how clever Fuentes thought the plan was.

  Hopefully, if he got himself killed trying to do what they wanted, Perigree would let his mom go — there’d be no reason to hurt her, would there? Not if he’d at least tried to do what they wanted?

  So he was okay with the getting-killed part, as long as his mom was okay after.

  And he’d get to spend the rest of the time with Fuentes — he was finding that he liked her a lot, even with her insults, and not just because hanging around with her let him see more of a girl’s skin that he ever thought he would, but because she seemed to like him too for some reason.

  He’d zoned out the night before, freaking out a little about what he found in the info on Chhabra, and had to shut down for a while. He just couldn’t process it all. He knew that freaked people out — they didn’t like it when he just sat there and didn’t answer them.

  Fuentes just shrugged when she figured out he wasn’t going to answer, then fixed herself a plate from the buffet and grabbed a beer. She sat with him until he came out of it and didn’t say a word — didn’t ask what the fuck kind of freak he was like the kids at school and she wasn’t angry he’d ignored her like one of his mom’s attempts at a boyfriend had been.