by D. M. Pruden
But doing that will screw over Chambers and Chloe and doom Nan to a life like the one I struggled to escape.
Fuck!
“Tell me about Nancy Chambers before I decide to accept your offer,” I say.
Umbra’s smile broadens, like he’s snagged a fish and just needs to reel me in. “Very well; after her capture, she was transported to Phobos.”
“Fuck me!”
I check out the room to see people staring at me. Turning back to him, I lower my voice. “Are you fucking serious? She’s on Phobos?”
“She was taken there.” His sobering correction warns me of the slippery slope I am considering. Then he sweetens the pot to draw me in. “That is also where Carson Willis currently is.”
I study him as he sits back and sips at his coffee, never taking his eyes from me. He’s an ambush predator, waiting in the shadows as he lures his prey to its doom. He is a dangerous man, and I fear I may be making the biggest mistake of my life, but he gives me no other choice that will allow me to sleep well ever again if I refuse him.
“Fine, I accept your offer. But just this once; I’m not promising to continue.”
“Of course,” he says before draining his cup. “Half of the agreed sum is transferred to your bank account. I will contact you after you arrive at Phobos.”
He gets up and leaves.
I remain at the table, replaying the encounter, desperately looking for any place I missed an opportunity to escape, but I find none. I can’t possess this knowledge and do nothing. Umbra did his job well, damn him.
Hoping that I’m not irreparably screwed, I leave the coffee shop to return to Requiem.
Chapter Eight
Requiem lifts off on schedule with me aboard her, despite my doubts about how deeply I’ve committed myself.
I spend the next two weeks keeping to myself as much as possible, preoccupied with how to proceed. A secretive visit to check out the mysterious cargo does little to settle me.
It is a box, a metre tall and two metres long. The manifest lists its contents as engine parts, which is an obvious lie given for whom we are moving the shipment. Even if I want to give in to my nosy nature, it is sealed with a high-end security lock, well beyond my ability to defeat.
I can’t prove it, but my gut informs me the crate is related to Willis.
Umbra is perfectly aware of what kind of catnip he offered by telling me that bastard went to Phobos. That son-of-a-bitch tried to kill me and Chloe. He is also the person responsible for her enslavement and the only likely connection to people who captured Chambers’ sister.
Umbra made no stipulation that I can’t tell anyone about our encounter, but he scares me with his almost firsthand knowledge about me, Chloe, Willis, and the recent events on Luna. How do I inform Chambers about what I learned without telling him about my new Martian stalker? The last thing he needs is to be unwittingly dragged into whatever I’m entangled in. He is distraught about the fate of his sister, and any decision he makes around the search for her is bound to be emotional. Given his familiarity with the Jovian Collective through Singh, he is too easy a target for Umbra to manipulate. I need to protect him, at least until I can figure out the bigger picture.
I find Chambers alone on the bridge. When I clear my throat, he turns to offer a friendly smile. “You’ve been hiding since we left Terra. Are you okay?”
I sit in the copilot’s chair. “I’m fine; just trying to catch up on some sleep, but how are you holding up?”
He sighs and avoids returning my gaze by looking at the control console. “Disappointed, obviously. I’d hoped we’d learn something. Now I need to start working some of my contacts again.”
“You mean people like Singh?”
“Yeah, I can’t come up with anything else. Hopefully something will shake loose if I dig around.”
I open my mouth but think better about what to say and clamp it shut.
“What were you going to say, Mel?”
“Um, I went back to talk to Yashnikov again.”
He frowns. “Why?”
“Well, you were a little intimidating the first time...”
“I was not.”
“I thought it might be worth a shot talking to him alone.”
“You employed feminine wiles? Did it work?”
“Yeah...sort of.”
He sits forward. “What did he say?”
Oh fuck, how much do I tell him?
“Willis went to Phobos.”
“What? Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
“I...er, I wasn’t sure how reliable his information is. He didn’t say if he is still there or where we can locate him if he is. I didn’t want to raise your hopes.”
He raises an eyebrow. “Then why tell me now?”
“Well, I thought a lot about what you said—about me not being a team player.”
“Aw, Mel, I didn’t mean it like that. I was angry.”
“No, you were right. I realized that by sitting on this information, I wasn’t being one, so, for better or worse, I’m sharing it with you.”
He sits back in his chair. “Wow, I’m really glad you took that to heart. This is fantastic news!”
“Well, let’s not become too enthusiastic, Roy. There is no way to verify what Yashnikov told me is true. Even if it is, how will we locate Willis?”
He laughs. “Mel, Phobos is a small place. There aren’t many places he can hide or go unnoticed. We can spread some money around. Someone will talk for the right price.”
“Sure, I guess you’re right.”
“We’ll arrive in three weeks. I’ll put out some feelers to my contacts.”
“Okay, but Willis is a dangerous man. Digging too deep might get someone hurt.”
“My friends are discreet.”
When I leave the bridge, Chambers is the happiest he’s been in a month. Now that the news is out, or my version of it anyway, I’ll share it with Chloe as well.
I can’t think of any way to tell either of them how I discovered that Nancy was taken to Phobos after her capture, though. That will raise far too many questions. If she or Chambers learn about Umbra, neither of them will hesitate to take any devil’s deal the man may offer to them. They are too emotionally vulnerable to see how dangerous that can be.
For now, I’m leaning toward the notion that my stalker doesn’t know as much as he pretends and simply wants to manipulate me to become his informant. If his information proves useful, it will be more difficult to protect them or for me to avoid falling into the trap. The last thing I want to do is drag them down with me.
Chambers, of course, will kill me if he learns any of this. He’ll see my keeping this from him as a major betrayal. It is best for me if he stays ignorant, because after the incident in the galley, I don’t think it will take much for him to kick me off the ship.
Stop being so melodramatic, Destin. He’ll do no such thing.
If I update Vostok, he can fill in some pieces. At the very least, he might be able to tell me something about Umbra.
I should be careful about relying on Oskar. He is helping me because I helped him, but if the balance becomes tipped too far in one direction, I’ll owe him. Being in debt to Oskar Vostok is not something I want. Far better for him to be indebted to me.
I go to the med bay and seal the door behind me.
“Hey!”
“Hello, Doctor Destin, I hope you slept well.”
She isn’t as annoying as I’d believed an AI assistant would be. Chambers won her in a poker game or something. When he installed her, I was suspicious as all hell. I thought she was going to be his spy and made my protests known, until I learned that the captain is just as stubborn as me.
I’d agreed to go into business with him, not become his life partner. He chooses to view that wall as my resistance to being a team player, but he’s wrong. A lifetime of living on the edge of survival, where every human encounter presents another danger of betrayal, harm, or death, tends to dampen one’
s enthusiasm to take people at their word. It was a breakthrough for me to agree to join his merry band of smugglers. Installing Maggie to spy over my shoulder seemed like the most natural thing for someone in his position to do.
When I realized she was not going to be removed, despite my petulant tantrums, I began to test her loyalties. I needed to learn what I could trust her with and what she was going to pass on to Chambers.
It was childish, when I think about it.
I set up little traps, forgetting to inform him that I sold some drugs at one of our stops but making sure Maggie was in on the deception; that kind of schoolyard nonsense.
It turns out she can keep a secret.
Of course, it is possible that she is doing the same thing to me on behalf of Chambers, so I keep important stuff concealed. But that doesn’t mean she can’t still be useful to me.
“Mags, check the inventory for how much peventrix is in Luna’s corporate warehouse network.”
It takes her a few seconds due to the distance between us and the Moon.
“Six pallets of 97,200 doses are stored in the shipping centre at Artemis.”
“Is any of it assigned for distribution?”
“Three are not designated. Would you like to reroute one of them somewhere?”
I smile. She is starting to anticipate me.
“Adjust the inventory to lose one of them and send it to my holding locker at Armstrong.”
“Not Requiem’s?”
“Nope, this one is a private sale.”
“Can I do anything else for you while I’m in the system?”
“No, I think that’s enough pilfering for one day.”
“Understood. The transfer is complete.”
Despite myself, I am becoming fond of Maggie. I make a mental note to tell Vostok about another shipment for him when I return to Luna. Hopefully the penentrix will save most of the children in his compound from developing joint deformities as they enter puberty. That should tip the balance back enough that I can gain access to his contacts on Phobos.
The sooner someone can start looking for Willis, the better our chances of catching him before he slips away.
Chapter Nine
Phobos is a weird little moon that looks like a misshapen lump of clay some child gave up on. Compared with other moons in the solar system, it is kind of embarrassing.
Hence the implied insult of it being the only place that most off-world ships may dock. The place is a second-class facility for a wannabe Earth.
Mars restricts noncitizens from going to the surface of the planet. They are extremely protective of the fragile atmosphere their terraforming stations are busy building. All imports must be delivered either to the receiving docks on Phobos or those constructed on the orbiting habitat, Olympia.
Olympia, of course, is the Martian capital, where all the rich mucky mucks live under Terran gravity. Naturally, they don’t want their precious warehouse space sullied by anything that isn’t a luxury item.
For the rest of the items needed by normal Martians, Phobos is the shipping and receiving centre, which is to say it is a comparatively busy place, though certainly not as busy as the ports on Terra or its moon.
Trade with Mars is difficult, due largely to the embargo imposed by Terra after the end of the Lunar War. Even though, by strict definition, the conflict ended in a draw that gave Luna its emancipation (their words, not mine), Earth paid a heavy price for not winning.
Immediately after the apparent resolution of the hostilities, Mars was among the first of Earth’s former possessions to formalize something that had existed for half a century, declaring itself independent. Since Terrans were in no economic position to wage another war, they chose to put in place an embargo to bully the Martians back into line. They can’t really do anything about it, because Mars’s military is weak. Most of their resources over the past three centuries were poured into the dream of terraforming their world.
So, they rely on the black market and trade agreements with Luna and the Galilean colonies to acquire what they need.
Slipping goods through isn’t difficult. Space is a huge place, so avoiding Terran patrol ships is easy, making the embargo something of a joke. But the Terrans capture or destroy enough vessels trying to run the blockade that anything that does make it through commands an obscene price on Mars.
After a ridiculously long wait, Requiem receives her approach vector. Mikey pilots us into a matching orbit and cuts our engines so that we can drift into position under inertia. We pass into something reminiscent of an open-ended cage floating a few kilometres over the moon. Under the remote control, our braking rockets fire, digging my restraining harness into my shoulders.
Outside, I see clamps extend from the frame and attach to our ship to hold us in position. Then the tiny flares of trucking motors on its exterior activate, and we are taken down to the surface.
When we are about twenty metres above it, a giant articulated robot arm emerges from a gaping hole in the ground. It gently grasps the frame and pulls us inside to be inserted into an empty slot along the wall of the cavern. Out of the window, I count dozens of other alcoves, many occupied by similar cradles holding other ships. They are laid out like a gigantic honeycomb.
The familiar faint hum of our activating gravity plating starts, and I sink into my seat under my own weight.
Chambers unbuckles his restraint and stands to address me and Chloe. “Requiem is one of the few places on Phobos where you’ll experience gravity.” He jerks this thumb toward the exit door to the bridge. “Out there, you’ll only weigh a few grams. Only key areas are rigged for grav-plates. The rest of the place is only equipped with metal decking, so ensure your magnetic boots are charged if you leave the ship. One misstep, and you might bounce yourself off a wall and be injured. Not all the passages are pressurized, so if you intend to venture to those areas, wear an EVA suit. Understand?”
We nod in unison.
“Excellent,” he says. “If you do go out, don’t go alone. Thousands of kilometres of tunnels make it too easy to become lost. While we wait our turn to offload the cargo, I’m going out to make some inquiries. You should both stay here. I’ll tell you if I learn anything.”
“How long will we be here?” I ask.
“Hard to say; maybe a few days. You saw all the other ships stacked in the grid. Everything is backlogged because of a recent labour strike.”
“So, enough time to track down Willis,” says Chloe with a determined expression.
“Let’s not jump ahead of ourselves,” says Chambers. “We first need to learn if he is or was here. That will take some digging.”
“When will you be back?” I ask. “I understand there are some interesting bars to try.”
He smiles. “I’m familiar with which ones you mean. I’ll be back in a couple of hours and take you two out for a drink. Hopefully I will find out something that we can celebrate.”
Chloe rises and with a yawn stretches like a cat. “I’m going to catch some sleep.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” I say. “Isn’t it midafternoon?”
Schmaltz and Mikey stop in their tracks and stare at me like I sprouted a third arm.
“Ship time is three o’clock in the morning,” says Schmaltzy.
My face warms as the blood rushes to my cheeks. “I guess my internal clock is still buggered.”
He puts a comforting hand on my shoulder. “If it is any consolation, Mel, station time is 17:00.”
I exhale noisily. “I hate space travel. Are you guys headed for bed, too?”
Mikey nods and walks past us. Schmaltz smiles. “I’m pooped. I’d stay up with you if I could, but I still have a couple of diagnostics to run on the engines before I hit the hay. Sorry.”
“Don’t worry about me. I’m a grown woman and can entertain myself.”
“Perhaps Maggie will play cards with you,” he says as he leaves the bridge.
“She cheats,” I call to his back. Or
, rather, she catches me when I do.
I go to my quarters and wait for fifteen minutes to give everyone time to settle in. When all is quiet, I proceed quietly to the airlock and slip on mag boots. I open the doors and clank down the connecting passage into the hub of the station.
About a hundred or so people move about within the vast chamber carved into the moon’s regolith. Several passages lead out of the central area, going to who knows where. Chambers’ warning about the potential to become lost in this place begins to make sense.
I access my CI for the address Vostok provided me: D-1-653. Not particularly informative, especially given that I could find no reference maps of the facility that aren’t half a century old. Many of the tunnels exiting this hub are new and not listed on the map.
Connecting to the local net, I search for anything updated, but their index system is shit. Obviously, people who come here already know where they want to go, so there is little incentive to update maps.
Switching on my wrist comm, I say, “Hey, Mags, can you access the network and find me a current layout of the station?”
Her voice booms in my ear jack, and I rush to turn down the volume. “I am uploading to your CI a recent blueprint documenting the latest tunnel construction, four years ago. That is the best I can do until I complete a deep search of their record system.”
I access the document she sent. “Thanks, this should help. Let me know when you find anything more useful.”
Trying to not appear like a tourist, I search for some insight of how the place is laid out, comparing it with what Maggie supplied. A designation number is above each opening, and before too long, I believe I know where I want to go.
After twenty minutes, having traversed so many tunnels I wonder if I can ever find my way back to the ship, I find an encouraging sign fixed to the bare rock of tunnel D-1. A short distance along, the number 653 is displayed discreetly on the wall next to a closed door.
I check both ways down the long, empty, brightly lit corridor, then press the door buzzer. After a long wait, just as I decide to push the button a second time, sounds of movement come from the other side of the door.
