Chapter 7
Once they were underway, the captain told Jackson to join him. His office was just off the bridge.
“Have a seat.” He clapped Jackson on the shoulder as he clomped past in his magnetic boots. “I think Shade was about ready to sell you off to the highest bidder.”
“And you weren’t going to stop her?”
“Nope.”
“Thanks for all the love.”
“Lots of love.” He chuckled. “This is a big ship full of love.”
“Did Shade put something in your drink?”
“She didn’t need to.” He touched a display on his desk. A woodland image appeared. “You see that?”
“Trees and a pond.”
“I own those trees. I own that pond. That’s actual, old-fashioned real estate.”
“On Earth,” Jackson said.
“Of course, Earth. There are deer on that property. Raccoons. There are fish in that pond. There are women in that town who are looking for a husband like me. Lot of lonely widows on Earth. When this job is done, I’m going home.”
“You’ve decided for sure this time?”
“I got the property. I got the permits. And once we sell that Citadel, I’ll have enough money to never have to work again. Hell, I might even get some treatments and set this body’s clock back a few decades.”
“Got to look good for all those widows.”
The captain sank into his chair and pulled out two small globes of amber liquid from a drawer on his desk. “Have a beer, Jackson.” He floated one over.
Jackson caught it. “You’ll miss the fun.”
“No,” the captain said and looked at his little spread. “I don’t believe I will.”
Jackson didn’t blame him. The captain had got his start fighting a war on behalf of his home planet, and a bunch more for hire since, commanding everything from barges to gunships to cruisers. He had fought the good fight. But it made Jackson a bit melancholy thinking about him leaving. The captain had been like a father, the kind who goes into hell to save a son.
“So Hilker told me about the sorry state of your air when he picked up that crate you were riding in…Except you never broke radio silence to call for help.”
“They would have been watching closely by that point, and I didn’t want to endanger the whole crew if I got picked up.”
“But if the cops had found you, they’d at least have oxygen.”
Jackson shrugged. “I had plenty of time.”
“Sure…Sure, you did.” The captain grinned, shook his head, then took a drink. “You know, of the many characters flaws you may possess, a lack of loyalty is not among them.”
Jackson cracked open his beer and changed the subject. “You’ll get bored with that pond and all of those widows. I give you six weeks, and then you’ll be sending an interstellar, wanting to get back in the game.”
“Not on your life.”
“If you don’t call, then I’ll suspect it’s because the law finally caught up with you.”
“Nah, that’s what the money’s for.”
The two of them sat there and drank their beers in silence for a time, because it had been a really stressful day.
“I tell you, Jackson, what we do is necessary…we both know that. But I’m getting worn out.”
Understandable. It was tiring, having to stay one step ahead of the authorities and to do business with people you could never really trust. The things the captain had seen had given him a peculiar code, which he stuck to like the most devout stuck to their religion. He’d bought this ship to practice that religion. “You’ve been like a modern-day Robin Hood. Stealing from the rich to give to the poor.”
“Only I steal weapons for embargoed worlds, and I don’t exactly give them away.”
“Okay, I’ll admit the analogy needs work. But if my people had had a mech like that Citadel back on Gloss, things might have turned out a whole lot different for us,” Jackson mused.
“Exactly. The powers that be said you weren’t allowed, no military grade hardware for the proles. That kind of dangerous firepower only belongs in the hands of the state. Monopoly of force, blah, blah, blah. Except when the law is two systems away and doesn’t give a crap about protecting you, the little guy gets stomped. Every. Single. Time.”
“Gloss sure did…”
The captain nodded.
“To running guns,” Jackson said and raised his beer in salute. “You’ve done the Lord’s work, Cap.”
He snorted. “When’s the last time you cared about what the Almighty wants?”
“Eh,” Jackson shrugged. He’d been raised in a faithful community, but his faith had died along with most of his people. “Just phrasing it like you or Tui would, I suppose. The universe, God, karma, whatever you believe in, some things just aren’t right.”
“Meaning it’s unfair for regular people to be disarmed just because some sheltered bureaucrat said they ought to be. I’ve armed the defenseless and helped the helpless.” The captain laughed. “And gotten well paid doing it.”
Jackson knew that the mercenary schtick only went so far. Most of the crew was in it for the money, but the captain himself had a code. Once he could no longer abide seeing people get pushed around, he’d broken the law, and started supplying those people with the tools needed to push back. Jackson had a code too, though his was a little more pragmatic. Growing up in a refugee camp would do that to you.
“Serious talk time though, Jackson. You’ve been a valuable part of this crew for a few years now, but you need to think about your future. You’ve got valuable skills. You’re a smart guy, you could go far. Maybe even get your own ship someday or pick a colony and settle down. Right now, you need to think hard about what you’re going to do when I’m gone.”
“That depends. Are you selling the Tar Heel to Shade? And if so, is she going to make Javi captain?”
Javier Castillo was their XO. He was a very competent spacer, but also a stern, deadpan, nearly antisocial man with the emotionally stunted personality of a synth. He and Jackson weren’t exactly besties. The XO had some real problems with things Jackson had done in the past. Things which the captain understood and overlooked, but which Castillo made no secret he would not. A few times he had referred to Jackson as the captain’s “rehab project.”
“I know you’ve got issues with Castillo, but he’d take good care of this crew. Shade’s Shade. She’s got the capital and her business needs experienced runners.”
“She’s already made you an offer, hasn’t she?”
The captain took a sip of his beer. “Yep. I’m considering it.”
“There’s no way you would’ve let Shade hand me over to the cops.”
“Yeah, you keep telling yourself that, son.”
“Six weeks,” Jackson said, “and you’ll start feeling your old age and decide retirement’s overrated.”
“Well, I ain’t there yet. So why don’t you get back to work and let me continue my slow descent into decrepitude and senility in peace.”
“I was heading down to the tech dungeon anyway to thank Jane for saving my bacon.” Jackson got up and headed for the door.
“There’s an old Earth saying, Jackson, that you shouldn’t fish off the company dock. Although I don’t think you can call it fishing if there’s a zero percent chance the fish will take the bait.”
“It’s not like that. Jane’s just one of the few people who appreciate the sacrifices I make for this crew of ingrates.”
“Uh-huh.”
“It’s purely platonic.”
“Well, good. Here I was thinking there’s something like ninety billion women out there, but you had to be sweet on my chief specter, who you also just happen to have insurmountable baggage with.”
By that he meant that Jane had seen him at his worst, since she’d literally poked around inside his brain and then put him back together again. But that couldn’t be that insurmountable. “Is this the part where you get out the employee handbook and lecture me on the dangers of crew fraternization?”
The captain gestured around his office. “Does this look like the sort of outfit that has a handbook? Carry on, Mr. Rook.”
* * *
Some time ago someone on the crew had spray-painted Specter’s Domain and a stencil of a cutesy cartoon skull and crossbones on the wall next to the door to the tech department. Jackson pulled himself through the open door. Jane was there working, a schematic on one wall display, with the guts of a robot in her hands. Stowed neatly against one wall were about half-a-dozen other bots of various sizes. They were Fifi’s companions. There was Dora, Squeak, Waterboy, Sam, Chachi, and a number of others.
All of them killers in their own right, capable of autonomous actions. But when they were linked to Jane, they became a coordinated cloud of death-dealing monstrosities. Which made it unnerving that she’d designed them all to be cute.
“Hey, how’s our demigoddess doing?”
Jane turned to look at him. “Jacky!” She was the only person on the ship who routinely called him that. And she got away with it because Jackson thought she was hot. Today her hair was in pigtails, which were turned up in the zero G. She had blue lipstick, blue eyes, and a little blue heart on her cheek.
Though she had joined the crew a year before he had, she was about his age, or maybe a year or two older. Not that Jackson knew that for sure, since Jane’s background was as mysterious as Shade’s. The captain seemed to enjoy collecting people who liked to pretend their pasts never happened. Like they were one big crew of blank slates with bad memories. Jane never said where she was from, nor dropped any hints, but it was obvious that it had been one of the more advanced worlds and she’d been the recipient of a top-tier technical education there.
She smiled at him, her teeth a luscious row of white.
“How’s your leg? Still bothering you from that hornet?”
“Nah,” he lied. Those nasty things hurt. But Jane probably knew that. She knew more about bot-related tech than anyone he’d ever met.
She nodded. “And how’s my little girl?”
Jackson fished in his pocket and brought out Fifi. “Spectacular.” He held his palm up, allowing Fifi to spring over to Jane.
“You’re a good girl, aren’t you?” she said in a cuddly voice.
Fifi said nothing.
Jackson said, “I got something for you on the surface.”
“Oh?” Her brows knit in question.
He lifted the bag of sausage.
“What is that?”
“A bit of Nivaasian heaven.”
He unwrapped it, but, to his disappointment, all his derring-do had mushed it. The top half suddenly broke off and fell out of the wrapping. He caught it before it floated away.
“So that’s heaven, huh?”
“Don’t let the sad appearance fool you. Warm it up, and you’ll thank me. It got irradiated in decon, but that’s not supposed to change the flavor.”
She took it and sniffed, then crinkled her nose. “This doesn’t smell like the others.”
“What others?”
“Tui picked up a case of these at the port. He’s throwing a party in the mess tonight.”
Jackson sighed as he looked at his cold, mushed sausage. It had been a good plan. A tremendous idea. Damn you, Jeet Prunkard.
She sniffed again. “It smells a bit like Raj.”
He took the sausage back and smelled it. And it had indeed picked up some of the funk-smell of his space suit. “I guess I should have wrapped it better.”
“It’s the thought that counts.”
“And I was thinking of the death goddess in the sky.”
“That’s sweet.” And Jane was the kind of person that when she said that it wasn’t in the least bit patronizing. “You know who would still want that? Shoe Guy.”
That was one of the crew assigned to her tech team. He had reddish hair, a hobo beard, and ate constantly. “I’ll put it in his dog bowl,” Jane said.
“You do that, I’m going to finish fixing Ron.” Who was an adorable little robot teddy bear that could assassinate you with his chain-saw paws. She turned back to her workbench and he got the impression she was blowing him off.
“Well, I just wanted to say thanks for the help down on the surface.”
“All part of the job.”
He never could get her. Jane was always nice, and often seemed as interested in flirting with him as he was with her, but then just when things were going well, it was like a switch got flipped and she’d get awkward. He was never quite sure if it was something he’d said just then, or something from the past that he had no control over. It was a little exasperating at times.
“Okay then.” That woman had to have a crack in that armor somewhere. “Well, goodbye, Fifi.”
“What do you say, girl?” Jane asked.
Fifi suddenly sprang from her shoulder onto Jackson’s neck. There was a pinch, and he startled. That’s what you did when a little flying razor blade hit the spot with all the arteries. Then Fifi leapt right back.
“What was that?”
“A thank-you kiss.”
Jane was looking at him, watching his reaction. As were all the other robots in the room. And he had to admit that weirded him out. He gave her a two-fingered wave and said, “Headed for the mess.” And then he pushed off and floated out into the corridor.
Jane smiled after Jackson left. She really did like the guy. He was like a gooey chocolate dessert. So tempting, but indulging would only lead to regret. Of course, what could one nibble hurt?
No, she stopped herself.
No, she reaffirmed.
The block she’d installed wasn’t a perfect solution. It could fail. It didn’t matter if it had been years. And he should know that.
If it failed, his old military command could take him over again. Or something worse on the net. And then the bloodlust would come upon him and Jackson would become their tool, just by flipping a switch.
Should that occur, it was Jane’s job to execute the protocol that would end it. She held the key to shut him down if necessary.
So she couldn’t get entangled with Jackson emotionally, no matter how enticing that path looked. Because if she gave into her feelings, it could cause her to hesitate when that dark moment arrived. And that could mean many other deaths. And a betrayal of her promise to Jackson.
No, she thought. That piece of pie is not on your menu.
And so Jane put it out of her mind and turned back to Ron the teddy bear to finish servicing his saw blades. And maybe give one of his ears a little pink flair.
* * *
Jackson put the riddle of Jane out of his mind. What he needed was food, and if Tui was giving out real, made-from-actual-animals Nivaasian sausage, he was going to enjoy one for a job well done…even if Shade refused to recognize it had actually been done well at all.
He grabbed a catch rail and pushed off toward the mess hall. A few moments later, the captain’s voice came over the corridor intercom. “Starting spin.”
Jackson oriented himself to what would soon be the floor. In front of him the corridor had a slight curve that gently rose until it disappeared upward in the distance. He engaged the magnetics in his shoes and started to walk. Soon enough the ring would be traveling a little over a hundred and sixty kilometers an hour. At that time, he could turn the magnets off. Until then, they would allow him to move and accelerate with the spin. By the time he made it to the mess hall he was feeling about half a G.
Since the crew’s work schedule was broken into three eight-hour blocks, a third were at their posts, a third were asleep, and the rest were here for dinner. They were an eclectic bunch. When the captain had first bought this ship out of surplus a decade ago, he’d hired nothing but Earth Block Navy, like he had been. Over time many of those had moved on, quit, or gotten killed somehow, and their gradual replacements had come from wherever the Tar Heel had been working at the time. And since they ranged back and forth across most of known space, the captain had picked up crew from basically everywhere.
But they were all loyal and good at their jobs. Considering they were all—by definition—criminals, the captain ran a tight ship, and the crew got along remarkably well. They weren’t pirates. They were smugglers. It was the same thing to the various governments they disobeyed, but to the moral makeup of the crew, it made all the difference in the world.
A whole bunch of people called out his name as he entered. Because regardless of whether he was friends with each of them individually or not, his last-minute escapades today had made it so they were all going to get paid well at their next stop. It was kind of nice being the hero.
“Just in time,” said Tui. “Get yourself one of these Sharmalans. The yellow sauce is to die for.”
“I did nearly die for one earlier.” Then he took one of the sausages and wrapped it in some of the local bread, which was sort of like a fluffy tortilla. He took a bite and enjoyed the savory explosion of juices in his mouth. Some taste engineer really earned his chops on this one. He added some sauerkraut and took another bite. And then Katze Yeager, one of Tui’s security team, pointed at Jackson’s neck.
“What happened there?” she asked.
Everyone turned and looked.
“Looks like a hickie,” Katze said.
Jackson reached up and felt his neck, then looked in the reflective surface on the wall to see what they were talking about. There was a nice little bruise where Fifi had given him her goodbye bite.
“That’s definitely a hickie,” Katze said.
Jackson had to agree. That’s exactly what it looked like. Had Jane sent Fifi to give him a little love peck? Was the Maiden of Death weakening?
“That’s just a bump I got during that shoot-out down at the surface.”
“Of course, you did,” another one of the crew said.
The others all laughed. And Jackson wondered—maybe Jane was giving him some kind of come-hither in her weird robot language.
The banter moved on. Jackson enjoyed his sausage, some chocolate-covered mango strips, and a few glasses of the crew brew, then bid the others farewell and headed back into the corridor for his room. The spin was up to a full G, and so he simply strolled along the corridor that led eternally up, music wafting from some room up the hall.
He proceeded to his room. Because of the Tar Heel’s size compared to its crew complement, everyone had the perk of private quarters, a remarkably rare thing to have as a spacer. Even so it was a small spot that was just big enough to include a sleep station, a place to stow his personal gear, a foldout desk, and a magnetic stool. The room recognized his presence, and the wall lit up, displaying the picture of a fantastic lagoon where the crew had vacationed a year or so ago while waiting for Shade to arrange some work.
He looked at the room, thinking about the captain’s woods and fishpond, and the cubby seemed very poor in comparison. But it was enough, he told himself. The captain had told him to think of his future, but he’d already been working on that. The plan was to keep making runner money for a few more years. Big money. Then get himself his own ship. And this cubby allowed him to funnel every spare dime into starting his own business.
If not on this ship, then he’d hire onto another. Even without plugging in, he was still a top-tier pilot. Somebody would be hiring. Though the odds of finding another captain this good to work for, and another crew this solid, were slim.
He shucked his clothes and crawled into his sleep station, a bag in a partially enclosed area, tethered so that he wouldn’t float off and get injured during periods of weightlessness. The surface of the bag was soft and cool and felt good against his skin.
Out his port, Jackson could see a couple of the radiators extending, the long sections of honeycombed material that shunted the heat generated by the ship out into space. Planetside the air did that for you. Out here, unless you were sitting on a hunk of frozen asteroid, there was nothing. It was radiate it or shunt it all into a heat sink and jettison that into space. That was the fun part about life on a ship, you were always only one equipment malfunction away from roasting or freezing to death. But it made for an incredible view.
As he stretched and lay there, his thoughts turned back to the old days, and the war for independence on the planet Gloss. He told himself it must have been because of those few minutes he’d spent driving the Citadel.
Jackson had only been a boy when the rebellion had started. The hab he’d grown up in had been bombed. His parents had spoken against the Collectivist takeover, been branded as dissidents, and then executed. He’d been forced to watch them swing before being loaded onto a train to spend the next few years surviving in a tent city hell. When the rebels had become desperate enough to start drafting child soldiers, he’d jumped at the opportunity. Anything was better than fighting for scraps in a refugee camp.
Most of his peers were sent to the infantry, to be fed right into the meat grinder, but Jackson’s reaction times and mental acuity had tested astonishingly well, so he had been trained to drive one of their few remaining mechs. But by that point in the war, they’d needed more than just drivers. They needed warriors who could become one with the machine.
Embargoed by all the civilized worlds, most of the rebels’ equipment was secondhand trash, picked up from arms dealers so unscrupulous they made Captain Holloway look like a saint in comparison. They only had a handful of weapon systems that could go toe-to-toe with the enemy, and Jackson was one of the few who possessed the raw neural processing power to fully link with such a device. They were so desperate for pilots that his brain surgery had been done in a tent, using black-market equipment, by a medic who had been in veterinary school when the war began. Of the three prospective pilots given implants that day, Jackson alone survived the process. He’d been fourteen years old.
With a bootleg mech and less than a week of training, Jackson had been sent to war.
Piloting a Thunderbolt 5 that was practically an antique, he’d somehow survived. Driven by stick, a T-bolt was about as responsive as a tractor but connected directly to his brain, twenty tons of armor had felt like a seamless extension of his body. For the first time in his life he was able to hit back at the cowards who had ruined his whole world, and he had plenty of hate to give. He’d spent the next few years stomping Collectivists like the roaches they were. Outnumbered, outgunned, it didn’t matter, because the rebels had justice and God on their side.
Jackson had been a good pilot. Really good.
The tide even turned for a bit. The rebels actually gained ground. Briefly, the people of Gloss had even started thinking they might have a real shot at freedom again, and Jackson was one of the handful who had saved that dream.
Only it had all turned into a nightmare when the desperate Collective had transitioned to net war and sent a worm to invade the linked pilots’ brains. Their antique firewalls never stood a chance. It was like being possessed by demons. Even now all he could remember about those dark days was the demons whispering in his mind while Gloss burned before him.
The captain had saved him from that fate, which was why Jackson would be loyal to this crew until the day he died. He’d failed his people…but he had survived, so he owed it to those who hadn’t to make something of himself.
After he’d escaped the hooks that had been sunk into his brain, Jackson had made a vow. Never again would he connect his mind with a mech. The last time he’d done so, he’d lost his freedom, and his friends had lost their lives. The risk was just too great.
Jackson drifted off to sleep thinking about a future with money and independence. Maybe a house at that lagoon. Maybe a huge tract of land on one of the new worlds. But as he fell into sleep his brain, like the addict that it was, turned to the old days, and dreamed about the wetware flooding him with intelligence and desire. It took him back to when he operated like a god of flesh and metal on the field of blood, the battle joy singing in his veins. Back to the time before the monsters found him.
* * *
Shade sat alone in her quarters, with a receiver set against her left temple. She couldn’t trust that the captain’s pet specter, Jane, wasn’t watching and listening, and so this was the only way to send a private message. The tiny implant the company had put in her brain translated and encoded it.
“We have it,” Shade said.
Even though the coded message was traveling at the speed of light via tight beam, her handler was currently about ninety million kilometers away. So she had to wait about ten minutes to get a response. Five minutes to get there, a few seconds to compose an answer, then five minutes back.
Norman Johnson’s response was deciphered by the implant in her brain, “You need to get a different host. This crew you’re working with almost botched the operation.”
“My host is fine.”
Another ten minutes.
“Your captain is a cowboy,” Johnson said.
He was, but this idiot was still wasting her time. “Who is my contact at the gate?”
A delay.
“We are working on it.”
Shade’s alarm rose. If gate security found the mech, there would be serious repercussions. “You don’t have that locked down yet?”
A delay.
“Our mule was hit by a wrench. She’s out. We will find another in time. Proceed as planned.”
The mech was the lynchpin in their new strategy on Swindle. A risky one. And Shade was not going to take the fall for someone else’s mistake.
“We can wait.”
A delay.
“This is too high-level an op. We have other assets. Proceed.”
Did they really expect her to believe their asset inside gate security had suffered an accident with a wrench?
“Is it the Syndicate? If it is, they will scuttle the whole thing, and the big man will be hanging in the wind.”
A delay.
“It was an accident. They happen. Proceed.”
Shade didn’t like it, but as usual she’d get the mission done, no matter what.
* * *
Jane saw each of Grandma’s short messages leave. Shade used a very clever program that enabled her to temporarily highjack and aim the ship’s tight beam. As Jane had done before, she piggybacked the messages. And as before, the packets shed her pig, which was maddening.
And worrying.
The captain had entrusted her with the information security of this ship. And Shade was the one dark box she’d not been able to open. It posed a risk to the captain and crew.
It posed a risk to Jane.
For years she had thought she’d been watching all communications to and from the Tar Heel, but then she’d discovered Shade’s secret comms that had been sneaking out right under her nose. Nobody else had noticed because the Tar Heel used its tight beams constantly, flickering them in a random search pattern searching for potential impact dangers, and Shade only borrowed the array for a fraction of a second each time she sent a message. The responses she got looked like sensor static to the rest of the crew, but not to Jane. She was good at picking the secret patterns from the chaos.
Jane received an alert whenever Shade activated her program now. She’d intercepted several of the messages hidden in the beams, except they were in a code even she couldn’t crack. Of course, the captain hadn’t ordered Jane to do this. She was watching Shade because her instincts told her not to trust the broker.
Jane adjusted the piggy’s slant and this time the message did not shed. Ten minutes later, Jane found where Shade’s message had been sent, an unlicensed installation way out in the Nivaasian system. Immediately after Shade’s conversation, that installation sent a regular message packet to be relayed through the gate.
Jane may not be able to hack Shade’s messages yet, but she might be able to finally discover who she was talking to. So she piggybacked that signal too. Maybe she’d get lucky and be able to track the message to its final destination on the other side of the gate.
Ride ’em, piggy. Ride.
A few minutes after Jane went back to work, the icon of a red flower appeared on her visual. It was a particular red flower, with blue spots on its petals. The kind that in all her travels Jane had only seen grow in one place—a small town on the coast, back on Savat.
She felt a tingle of alarm, as she always did when reminded of home.
The icon meant that one of her sisters was trying to contact her. Of course, Jane never talked directly to any of them. That was far too dangerous for all of them. Instead they communicated using a method they’d devised years ago to hide their messages from the scientists who had made them. There had been thirty of them then. Thirty genetically engineered sisters in the sibling cohort of Mary 231.78. Now there were only four of them left.
Jane selected the flower, and in the corner of her visual a video played. It showed an outdoor café on a street in a city on another planet that Jane knew would take two gate hops to reach. In front of the café were a number of tables. There was a lime-green napkin on one of them. A few tables away was a set of dishes some diners had left for pickup. At another table was a man and woman and a child. There were bottles and plants and a hundred other items, including the positioning of a number of chairs, and Jane read them all in the blink of an eye.
It was all about how those seemingly incongruous items had been arranged. Everything in that video meant something. It was a language known to only four people in the whole universe.
It was a message from their 22nd sister. It was a warning. The geometric folds in the napkin said there was a new hunter snooping around. Possibly part of an Iyer Affiliate. The color indicated the emotion of wrath. The tablecloth, fear. The bend of the leaves and number of plates and even the shape and position of the crumbs told her that 22 was still upset with Jane accidentally drawing attention to them, and a hundred other subtle things.
Jane read the message again to be sure.
She sighed.
So Savat had not given up on finding the daughters of Mary 231.78.
Jane closed the message. She would have to tread carefully.