by S. C. Jensen
I thought about that. “How cushy are we talking? How much does it cost to rent a gorilla goon these days?”
I got another grunt for my answer.
The little rocket was a sleek silver unit with no discernable markings. Gore swiped a key card and punched in a code and the round airlock port shushed open. We stepped through and it sealed up behind me. A little green light blinked above the door, declaring the airlock secure.
We climbed the narrow metal staircase to the rocket in single file. Our footsteps rang out across the cavernous space, bouncing off the dome of scaffolding above us and landing dead and flat against the rubber ground. Stars glittered through the gaps in the metal skeleton. I knew the dome would fold back before the bangtail launched, but the bare scaffolding and the empty space above made me feel simultaneously claustrophobic and exposed. My chest muscles constricted around my heart and lungs. I tried not to think too much about the trip back to Terra Firma. Space travel was all well and good, but I didn’t like to dwell on the specifics of hurtling through the void in a glorified tin can.
Gore swiped his key again and opened the hatch into the rocket. No personnel greeted us. We stepped inside, him ducking his big moony head to get through the door, me dragging my feet as if anyone cared that I didn’t want to do this. A long tubular corridor stretched in front of us, leading toward the passenger seating area. The tightness in my chest spread and tears burned behind my eyes. Crying in front of a hit man. It was a new low, even for me.
The memory of Rae’s skull crunching beneath my metal fist flashed into my mind. A sob burbled up from the back of my throat, and I tried to choke it back. “I wish I could have said goodbye.”
Gore stopped, plugging the narrow passage with his girth, and turned around. He patted the shoulder of my upgrade with a hand the size of my head. He said, “How ’bout we come back, so you can say hello instead.”
I sniffed and nodded my head, surprised to see genuine concern on the big oaf’s face. His touch was just a pressure across my synthetic nerves, but the feeling went all the way into my chest and loosened something there. If anyone could pull off this heist, it was SecurIntel’s mercenary.
“Yeah,” I said, “Okay. Deal.”
We spilled out into the seating area like a couple of drunk tourists stumbling into the wrong part of town. The room was empty, of course, except for the two of us. But I couldn’t shake the feeling I was being sized up as an easy mark by some back-alley Grit District hustler. I chose a seat and sagged into it, trying to remember how to operate the harness without a flight attendant to help me, and ignored the prickling at the back of my neck. The sounds of the shuttle spooling up assured me that somewhere there was a crew on board, and we weren’t going to have to figure out how to fly the thing ourselves. I fumbled with one of the buckles, forcing the clasp into a socket that didn’t want to have anything to do with it. The tightness crept back into my chest. I cursed and unclipped everything to start again.
“Just stop.” Gore said, and showed me how to do it.
I gritted my teeth against a barrage of nervous snark and let him help me. I couldn’t quite shake the animosity I’d felt toward him when I thought he was in league with our twisted slave-driving shuttle captain. But he claimed to know Tom, and we were playing for the same team. Maybe I could trust him. I hoped I could.
Gore stored his body bag full of supplies in one of the compartments beneath the seats and buckled himself into the chair opposite me. He pulled out a bag with a tube attached to the side of my seat. The mouthpiece attached to the top flopped over his big white fist.
“Oxygen mask?” I said.
“Barf bag,” he said. “You look a little green.”
I laughed half-heartedly, but saliva rushed into my mouth as if prepping for the inevitable.
“Do you know how to fly this thing?” I joked pitifully and tried to swallow my stomach.
He shrugged. “Autopilot.”
The smile fell off my face and landed at our feet.
“Don’t worry about it.” He winked at me. “It’ll be silk.”
“No helmets?” I asked, remembering the suits we’d had to wear on our last trip.
“No need,” he said. “If there’s an emergency, we’re going to die, with or without headgear.”
The lights in the passenger area dimmed to a soft purple glow. Gore leaned back in his seat, closed his eyes, and instantly fell asleep, snoring faintly. I sat there, hating him in a silent rage. Some kind of genetic modification, I assumed. No one in their right mind could sleep while launching into outer space on a tiny, unmanned rocket.
“It’ll be silk,” I said Gore’s words like a mantra. “It’ll be silk.”
I couldn’t hear my own voice over the sound of the engines. The roar grew to a high-pitched squealing crescendo, loud enough to turn my eardrums inside out. That was probably normal. Nothing to worry about. The pain in my head was almost enough to make me forget about my stomach.
The shuttle trembled beneath my feet. My seat vibrated until my legs went numb and my teeth rattled. The overhead lights flickered. I closed my eyes. The shuttle rocked so hard it seemed to shake loose of its moorings. Somewhere above us, the launch bay airlock would be opening, rolling back the dome, and shunting the recycled station air into space.
“It’ll be silk,” I chanted. “It’ll be silk. It’ll be—”
With a lurch, we hurtled up and up into the cold, black emptiness of the void.
My stomach stayed behind on LS-103.
I wanted to keep my eyes closed and pretend none of this was happening, but my guts were spinning in big wet circles. Even strapped into the harness, I could feel the strange weightlessness as we left the gravitational pull of the asteroid. I fumbled for the bag receptacle next to my seat. Not sure Gore and I would ever be friends if I horked in zero-G.
I gripped the mouthpiece to my face and took deep breaths, as if it were an oxygen mask, hoping to trick my body into keeping down my doughnut. I stared at the wall behind Gore. The silver surface had a gentle purple glow in the dim lighting. I forced myself to focus on something other than my stomach. Moulded panels made up the rounded edges of the passenger area, and my eyes trailed the lines between the panels like a boiler car riding the grid all around the room.
The shaking of the spacecraft increased in intensity until it dissolved into a constant hum. There was a faint tug as the artificial gravity system kicked in. My stomach settled back where it belonged, and I released the bag, letting it retract into the side of my seat. I watched Gore snoring away, peaceful as the dead. Not a care in the world, as if killing people for money was right up there with healing the deformed on the pearly stairway to sainthood.
Movement caught my eye just to one side of Gore’s dozing head. My muscles tensed. A human-shaped bump had appeared on the far side of the room. Was it a trick of the lights? No. The bump shimmered and shifted slightly.
“Gore,” I whispered through clenched teeth. I tried to kick at his feet from across the aisle, keeping my eye on the shape. “Wake up.”
An arm protruded from the wall, and in the hand was something the size and shape of a small-bore pistol. A disembodied voice said, “Don’t say another word.”
I knew that voice.
The last time I’d spoken to her, she’d been dropping clues about silver necklaces with red stones and the android infestation within the Last Humanist Church of the Mezzanine Rose.
The last time I’d seen her, she’d been staring through the glass of the observation room at LunAstro, possibly reading my mind.
The rest of the body stepped away from the wall, like a smooth silver mannequin with no facial features. But as I stared, my mouth gaping, the silver film dissolved and Patti Whyte appeared, wearing a skin-tight black leotard, her auburn hair pulled back in a tight bun at the nape of her neck.
“Patti?” I
said.
There was a click behind my head, as if someone pumped the action on a plasma charger, and a hand appeared over my shoulder. It pointed a handheld cannon at Gore.
A voice in my ear said, “That counts as a word. Should I shoot him?”
The android, Patti Whyte, moved like a shadow toward me and Gore, the pistol relaxed at her side as if she was certain she wouldn’t need it. Having seen her in action before, I knew she could engage swiftly and uncompromisingly if she did. Even Gore wouldn’t stand a chance against a creature like Patti.
“Keep him in your sights, Johanna,” Patti said. “But don’t shoot him unless you have to. We need him.”
“What are you doing here?” I twisted in my harness, trying to see the woman behind me. I caught a glimpse of a tight, black sleeve and nothing more. “Where did you go when Rae was—”
“Silence,” Patti hissed. “I must secure the ship before we can speak. I’m trying to help you, Marlowe. I’m trying to help Rae.”
That shut me up faster than the threat of being shot. Patti was going to help Rae? Could it be true? It could be a trap if she somehow knew about Nathanial Price and his demands.
And my plans to see them through.
Patti’s suit shimmered again and she disappeared into the wall. I couldn’t make out where she was going. Even knowing what to look for, I lost her immediately.
Gore snorted helpfully in his sleep, twitched, and settled back into whatever guilt-free dream he was having.
Johanna stepped out from behind me, her plasma cannon swinging lazily before her. She wore a pearlescent-black cat suit with more zippers and buckles than was strictly necessary. Thigh-high boots—laced from the impressive heels all the way up the backs of her long, lean legs—clicked as she paced. A corset cinched her waist into waspish proportions and seemed to squeeze her breasts out the top of the suit. Above her dangerously exposed chest, a long, slender neck held up a face that could have been carved from the palest marble, beautiful but hard. Purple eye makeup shimmered beneath sculpted black eyebrows, and waves of electric purple hair framed the sharp angles of her face. Her thin, black-painted lips curved in a smile.
“Like what you see, Pinky?” Her voice was a husky drawl. “I’m afraid this unit is pay to play.”
“I can’t tell if you’re going to shoot me, or bend me over and spank my bottom,” I said.
“That depends.” She flashed her teeth at me and spun the plasma cannon around her finger like an old gunslinger. “Have you been a naughty girl?”
I watched the gun twirl around her purple-taloned finger and winced. “Could you put that thing away while we’re bantering? It’s making me nervous.”
She stopped the gun and levelled it at the side of Gore’s sleeping head. She said, “I don’t think so.”
“Where did Pat—”
Johanna whipped the cannon around and pointed it between my eyes. “No names.”
The proximity of the plasma weapon made my skin crawl, and the nerves beneath my upgrade flared as if anticipating an explosion like the one that had taken my arm a year ago. My tongue seemed to swell in my mouth. How could Gore sleep through this? He was supposed to be a state-of-the-art killing machine, not a dozing octogenarian.
I said, “Where did she go?”
“You’ll find out when we’re ready to tell you.” The woman rested her elbow against the headrest of Gore’s harness seat, dangling the gun in front of his face. She grinned evilly at me. “Or maybe you won’t.”
Gore’s ham-hock hand flashed out and gripped Johanna’s wrist. With a sharp twist, the gun fell from her fingers and clattered to the floor. The woman’s grin spread even wider, baring a few too many pointy white teeth.
“Oh,” she growled in the back of her throat, “I was so hoping you would do that.”
Gore’s colourless eyes widened and his grip tightened on the woman’s right arm. But it was her left arm I was watching. Fingerless, synth-leather gloves encased both of her hands. She curled the digits on her left hand as if cupping an invisible orb. Her thumb twitched. A ball of purple flame burst into the palm of her hand, and she reeled back to torch him.
Gore’s hairless brow wrinkled and his bloodless lips grimaced. He said, “Well, this is something new.”
“Let go of my wrist,” Johanna hissed. “Or I’ll turn your eyeballs into jelly.”
“Johanna!” Patti’s voice crackled dangerously. “Flames off.”
The sound seemed to come from one of the corridors branching off the far side of the harness room. But the corridors were empty.
Johanna narrowed her eyes at Gore. He stared impassively into her face and cocked his head to one side. He said, “Ladies first.”
“Quit flirting with him, Johanna.” Patti shimmered into solidity from the entrance of one of the corridors, like a heat mirage in a desert. She strode into the room and stood before the pair like a disgruntled schoolmarm with her two most troublesome students. “If you barbeque another merc at this point in the game, we’re not going to have time to find a replacement.”
Johanna’s thin black lips pouted, but she squeezed her left hand into a fist, extinguishing the flames with a hiss. She said, “He started it.”
“Knowing you”—Patti crossed her arms and sighed, a painfully human expression of annoyance dripping off her synthetic face—“he was likely provoked.”
“Come on.” Johanna stepped on the stock of the plasma cannon, flipped it up with her toe, kicked it into the air, and caught it deftly in her gloved hand. I had to admit it was a cool move. She said, “I couldn’t let him get away with that snoring act.”
Gore and I watched the exchange in silence, he with a bemused twinkle in his eyes, and me with a huge vein throbbing in my forehead. No, I couldn’t see it. But I could feel it there, pulsing with each heartbeat.
“Excuse me,” I said. “If you’re not going to shoot us for the moment, can we at least get out of these harnesses? That’s request number one. And two, what in the name of Cosmo Régale’s bottomless handbags are you doing here?”
Patti frowned. “That is not a request.”
“Great line of bags though.” Johanna turned an appraising eye toward me. “You don’t look like the type to know a Régale from a Valentia. Colour me impressed.”
“Don’t get me started on Lorena Valentia.” I fiddled with the buckle on my shoulder. The high-fashion hack had taken umbrage at me for helping Cosmo Régale press charges against her for intellectual property theft. She’d exacted her revenge from prison, with Libra’s underhanded blessing, by setting a swarm of frenzied feedreelers after me when Rae and I were attempting to escape HoloCity. I said, “That vetch has something extremely unfashionable coming her way.”
“You know, we might just get along after all.” Johanna winked at me. “Sorry I threatened to put a hole in your head.”
Patti Whyte held up a hand to cut off the chatter. Her suit shifted, taking on the colour and texture of Gore’s navy-blue suit, then settled back into black.
“Before I allow you to roam freely aboard this spacecraft, I need assurances that neither of you will attempt to contact LunAstro or Libra to inform them of my whereabouts,” the android said. “I cannot possibly stress the importance of this enough. The fate of the HoloCity Trade Zone, and maybe the world, could be at stake.”
I snorted. “Look, if you’re going to help me help my friends, I’m sold. You don’t have to lay it on so thick.”
“I’m afraid this is no dramatization,” she said. “What happened to Rae is only the beginning of the horrors we are about to witness.”
“Again with the horrors.” I wiped a chunk of bubble-gum-pink hair out of my eyes and shifted in my seat. “I will have you all know that I did not ‘unleash’ anything. Not on purpose, at least. And I resent—”
“You?” Patti whirled on me. “This has nothi
ng to do with you.”
“Nothing to do with me?” I tried to rein it in, but the last couple of words came out with a twisted shriek. Blood pounded behind my eyes. “You are the one who dragged me into all this with your techRose dancers and your street drugs and your holoskin-wearing plugs. And then you got Rae involved, and now she’s possessed by some rogue computer program, and my ex-boyfriend is being tortured by Libra, and—”
“Wait a minute,” Gore said, leaning to the side to peer at me around Patti’s side. “You and Tom?”
“I meant partner.” My face flushed. “Ex-partner. Mind your own business.”
“He told me you were tight,” Gore said. “I didn’t know he meant . . .”
He made a rude gesture with his pale, sausage fingers. Johanna cackled like she’d just found a bulk discount on eye-of-newt at the Bog Witch Wholesale.
“It was a long time ago, okay?” My voice snapped. “It’s not a thing anymore. Emphasis on ex.”
“Still carrying a torch.” Johanna sighed. “Pathetic, but sweet.”
“My point is,” I said, the heat in my face suggesting my complexion had gone from boiled lobster to overripe plum. “This whole nightmare has everything to do with me. Molly Elless went so far as to accuse me of smuggling Libra’s decryption malware into the LunAstro mainframe.”
Johanna put her hands on her hips and pursed her lips smugly at Patti. “I told you they wouldn’t be able to see past their own arse cheeks.”
“They really don’t suspect . . .” Patti whispered. “No. Why would they?”
She locked her arms behind her back and stalked away, muttering under her breath. Inside my jacket, a faint vibration buzzed against my ribs. Hammett. I had to get somewhere private to check in with it. Maybe there was news. Maybe it had another video from Nathanial Price. A wave of cold washed over me.
“Look, my best friend and my . . . whatever Tom is . . . are in danger,” I called after her. I jammed my thumb against an uncooperative buckle on my harness and cursed loudly. “And whether I like it or not, I’ve agreed to dress up as a corpse in order to infiltrate the most well-guarded R&D facility in HoloCity. So yes. It’s about me. It’s all about me. I am hereby owning the me-ness of this situation.”
