***
Jen made her way back to the room she’d rented at one of the better spacer hostels along the Strip, the wide boulevard of flophouses, clubs, and bar-and-brothel businesses that delineated the border between Lowmarket and Midmarket on the north side of the city. The Busted Flush was clean, moderately priced, and far enough from the centre of the Strip to avoid most of the rowdy brawls that tended to spread down the street like wildfire from the more boisterous joints. It wasn’t that she was averse to boisterous—by her count she’d been thrown out of most of the bars on the Strip at least once, and had been banned from at least three—but partying got done when the job was finished, not when it was getting started. If she wanted to pick up Shan’s contacts, she needed to move fast.
Sliding her long, black leather duster from her shoulders, she threw the coat across the bed and unclipped the webbing harness that held her weapons and her tech, wriggling out of the straps with a sigh of relief. The coat was a cliché, that much she knew, but for places like Hel’s Market it provided both a degree of anonymity (since such attire was practically a uniform in Lowmarket) and a practical method of concealment for the equipment she wouldn’t countenance stepping outdoors without. And besides, it looked good on her, or so she’d been told.
Grinning to herself, she retrieved her holo-emitter and planted the palm-sized metal hemisphere on the wood-effect laminate of the small desk by the wall. Powering the device up, she logged into the Fortune’s tight-beam comm network and settled in to do some work.
Three hours later, she’d finished setting up meetings with four of her five prospective crew members and amassed a substantial quantity of public domain data on her target and the location, a museum complex in the heart of one of the most famous cities on Earth: Berlin, capital of the United Terran Republics.
Despite having travelled to Modeus a few times, she’d only ever been to Earth once. She’d never really had much reason to visit. She’d been born deep in Marauder space (and no self-respecting Marauder referred to their home turf as the Commonwealth of Free Terran States) on a terraforming colony at the ass end of the Bronwen system, to a couple of career engineers who’d never really given a shit about her. Her parents had never hesitated to remind her that she was an accident, an oversight, someone who should never have been around to bother them as they gave all of their time and attention to their great undertaking, bending the ecology of a planet to their will. The day Jen had turned eighteen she’d walked out, jumping (as she’d put it to her somewhat shocked mother) before she was pushed. She’d gone to the civic records bureau, changed her name to something that wouldn’t remind her every day of the assholes who’d barely tolerated her existence, then signed on with the marines to get out and see the galaxy.
So it followed that trips to Earth had been unattainable as a kid. As a serving soldier in the marines, she’d gotten her one visit, making planetfall on the storied human homeworld for a truly unforgettable forty-eight hour liberty in the Marauder diplomatic enclave of Hong Kong. In the six years since she’d been discharged, however, her work had generally kept her away from Earth; the mining outpost on Callisto was as close as she’d gotten, and that had been close enough. The people she’d met, on Callisto, on Europa, on Io, and on Earth, had generally been stiff-assed, condescending and unpleasant, and it was an impression she’d never really cared to try and refute. “Well, Earth, now’s your opportunity to really impress me,” she muttered at the slowly revolving image on her display. As the planet spun to reveal the marker for Hong Kong on the map, she huffed a fond laugh, recalling just how smashed she and her fire team had been; she’d barely been able to walk, and consequently had nearly taken a headlong dive into the bay while gawping at the evening light show from the Kowloon waterfront. Thud’s massive bulk had been the only thing that had anchored her, saved her from a soaking. She was looking forward to seeing the big fella again, she decided as she shut the display window down and set up the audio call.
“Jones.” Thaddeus Jones’ deep baritone voice was unmistakable, provoking an instant smile even though Jen hadn’t heard it for over five years.
“Hey, is that you, Thud?”
“Who wants to know?” he demanded suspiciously.
“Jen Bronwen. Been a long time, huh?”
“Holy shit!” Jones exclaimed. “Little Jenny? Is that really you?”
“Don’t call me Jenny, asshole.”
Jones roared with laughter. “Ha, that’s definitely the little spitfire I remember. How you doing, kiddo?”
“I’m good, Thud, real good. Listen, this is costing me a packet so I’ll keep it short. I hear you’re looking for work?”
“Sure am—oh, wait, you’re the client I was told to expect a call from, huh?”
“Yeah. Looking to do a little bait and switch job on Earth. I need a solid crew, and they don’t come more solid than you, do they, big fella?”
“Ah, go fuck yourself, Jen,” Thud replied amiably. “You want my help or not?”
“I do, God help me.” Jen grinned. “Man, it’ll be like old times. Except with fewer salutes and more crime. But you’re OK with that, right?”
“Sure. Count me in.”
“Awesome. Where’s your ass at?”
“Ganymede. Doing a little property minding, so I’m right on your flight path.”
“Great. I’ll be in touch with an ETA.”
“Sounds good, Bronwen. Be good to see you again. It’s been too long.”
“It has that, Thud. It has that. All right, talk to you soon.”
“See ya, kiddo.”
Jen hung up the call, checked the time, and smiled. Fishing a beer from the refrigerator, she popped the top as she placed her final call of the evening. “Orden?”
“Ah, Captain Jennifer. You’ve made up your mind?”
She took a deep breath. “I’m in.”
JENNIFER
999 ATA - Hel’s Market, Hel, Asgard System, Neutral Space
Darya Solinas proved to be a hard man to find.
Not, Jennifer would reflect in hindsight after finally catching up with the changeling, that that was an undesirable ability for a con man.
Her prospective crew member had left her a text-only reply on her comms in response to her unanswered initial call, directing her to meet him at The Whore and Whisky, one of the Strip’s more notorious establishments. It was a good choice for a neutral meeting, in point of fact one of Jen’s preferred locales for handling her more legally dubious enterprises. Between the relentless bass thunder of the electronic dance rhythms pounding from the speakers, the din of a hundred bellowed conversations, and the notoriously deaf, blind, and dumb staff, it was an easy place in which to be inconspicuous. For an astronomical price, there were also private show booths for hire. Ostensibly to permit the indulgence of more exotic tastes than the public stage or the regular personal stalls could allow, the rooms were guaranteed to be soundproofed, bug-proofed, and free from any form of surveillance, and more often than not the cream of Hel’s Market’s underworld could be found inside, fully dressed, stone-cold sober and attending to their more sensitive transactions. Jen was too low-level a player to be able to afford such luxuries for her meetings, so she got herself a beer, found a corner to lurk in and watched the crowd watching the dancers.
Half an hour drifted by, and no one made contact. While Jen had a holograph of Solinas to refer to, it was only useful if he was going to show up in his native form. He hadn’t specified, which meant he could literally be anybody. Feeling the first stirrings of irritation, she drained her beer and decided she’d have one more. If he still hadn’t shown up by the time she was done, she’d call Shan and look for an alternative.
She headed back to the bar and the cyborg bartender now on duty beckoned her closer so he could bawl in her ear when he took her thumbprint for payment. “There’s a private booth set aside for you, Miss. Third floor, number three-sixteen. It’s pre-paid till tomorrow, full service.” He handed her
a key card. “Enjoy the show.”
Jen looked down at the card, pressing her thumb against the sensor pad. The holographic window lit up with her formal ID picture, ruling out the chance of a mistake. Instincts prickling, she rolled her shoulders inside her coat as she worked her way across the floor of the bar, feeling the reassuring shift of weight of the blaster holstered against her ribs. Resisting the temptation to start looking around for a tail, she took the stairs to the third floor rather than the elevator, and as she approached the door to the booth, she hitched her right coat sleeve back a little and tapped the power switch on the hold-out bracelet she customarily wore to when she had to go lightly armed. It was a single-shot weapon, and far too underpowered to muster up a lethal charge, but an accurate shot could kill, and the element of surprise it afforded more than compensated for its lack of muscle.
Taking a steadying breath, she tapped the keycard against the sensor. The door cycled open, and she stepped through to find a changeling sitting on the small performance dais, looking unutterably fed up. He or she (it was nearly impossible to tell a changeling’s sex just by looking at them—their anatomy lacked any obvious hints) looked Jen up and down appraisingly, then sighed and stood up with a distinct lack of enthusiasm. “What’s your pleasure?”
“Excuse me?”
“What’s your pleasure?” the changeling repeated in the same bored tone. “I can be human, neomorph, ercinean, or changeling, male or female. You’re the client, you get to choose your flavour.”
“Oh, right, I get it.” Jen dropped onto the comfortable couch in the centre of the room and set her beer on the small table before it. “Sorry, I, uh… wasn’t really expecting to have this service laid on for me, so I haven’t given it any thought.”
“I get paid either way,” the changeling replied indifferently, sitting back down on the dais, “so you can just let me know when you’ve overcome your paralysing indecision.”
“Do you talk to all your johns this way?” Jen asked, fighting the beginnings of a grin and getting a long-suffering sigh for her trouble.
“Now what business of yours is that?”
“None at all, I’m just curious.”
“It’s your money,” the changeling shrugged. “If you want to waste it talking, sure, why not, I can do that. No, I don’t speak to all my clients this way. I’m making a special effort for you, baby. I like you more than any other customer who’s ever walked through that door.”
Jen smirked. She had a good idea of what was going on, but the diversion was amusing, for the moment. “Should I be flattered?”
“If you are, I’d say your life is even sorrier than mine.”
“Aw. Aren’t you happy in your work?”
“Oh, sure,” the changeling drawled, waving a pincer at the spartanly decorated chamber they were sitting in. “This is the career I dreamed of as a child, can’t you tell?”
Jen took a pull from her beer. “So, I have to ask—do you really get much call for being an ercinean?”
“Well, from our ercinean clients, sure.”
Jen shook her head to try and dislodge the sudden mental image the conversation was conjuring. “I guess I never really think of ercineans that way. Any time you meet one they’re always so… otherworldly. Serene.”
“Well, lucky you. Anytime I meet one they’re always desperate for sex.”
“You’re ruining my preconceptions about the universe, you know,” Jen accused mildly.
“You’re the one who wanted to talk instead of fuck.” The changeling tossed their head in a gesture Jen recognized as impatience. “So, are you any closer to a decision?”
Jen shrugged carelessly. “Nope. Truth to tell, I’m not really in the mood, and I’m not particularly a fan of using prostitutes. Call me conceited, but I do pretty well getting laid without needing to pay money for my fun. And, to be completely honest, I’d like you to get to the point and stop wasting my fucking time. Not that I don’t appreciate the trouble you’ve gone to keep this meeting discreet, but it’s a little overdone, isn’t it?”
The changeling laughed at that, and shifted appearance slightly, the colors of his beak becoming more vibrant and the dark ruff of feathers around his neck becoming more pronounced until he resembled the holograph from Shan’s files. “My apologies, Captain Bronwen. I’ve found over the years that there’s no such thing as too careful in my line of work.”
“That’s understandable, but why the charade? These rooms are supposedly secure.”
“They are indeed, but two reasons. One, you got a little taster of my skills.”
“And I’m impressed. If I hadn’t been looking for you, you would have fooled me. You sure sounded like a whore.”
“And two, I like to know a little something about the people I undertake to work with,” Solinas replied, ignoring the barbed critique. “How you responded to a free pass to this establishment’s facilities told me a great deal about you.”
Jen regarded him sourly. “Really? I have to pass a morality test to hire you?”
Solinas shrugged. “As I said already. No such thing as too careful.”
“So… did I pass?”
“You did.” Solinas offered his pincer, human style. “Darya Solinas, at your service.”
“Jennifer Bronwen. And next time you want to know something about me, just damn well ask.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” Solinas rose to his feet, crossed to the couch and sat down beside her. “So, Jennifer Bronwen. Let’s talk a little more about this job of yours.”
“What do you want to know? You’ll understand, I’m sure, that for security reasons I’m not going to disclose details here.” She smiled humourlessly. “Since there’s no such thing as too careful.”
“Indeed. The material I received from Shan’Chael and your initial message were more or less enough to make a decision. I’m interested. I only have one or two further queries.”
“Shoot.”
“Are you expecting me to undertake any seduction during the job?”
“Maybe a little flirting, for the sake of a diversion, but not more than that,” Jen answered, shifting her weight uncomfortably. “I wouldn’t ask you to do that.”
“Oh, I don’t mind if it’s necessary,” Solinas clarified. “It’s just best to make sure that I prepare my appearance appropriately for the work you want me to do.” He clicked his beak in amusement. “And you never know, I might meet someone I like. My only other concern is for our exit strategy. Shan’Chael indicated you would have that taken care of.”
“We’re taking my ship to Modeus,” Jen clarified. “We’ll dock at Ganymede, catch a commercial transport and transfer down to Hong Kong, then catch a sub-orb to Berlin from there. Extraction will be by the same route, and I’ll drop you off at Ice Serpent or back here, whichever you prefer. Or you can remain on Earth—I know you have more options for a discreet exit than the rest of us.”
“I’ve no particular desire to stay on Earth after the job,” Solinas shrugged. “I like humans, but not that much.” He cocked his head to one side. “Well, that’s all I really needed to know, I think. I’m in. When do we leave?”
Jen polished off her beer in two quick gulps. “Tomorrow. I have one more guy to meet here, then we’ll need to make a run to Korxonthos to make a pickup, and we’ll meet the other two members of the team in Modeus.” Wai-Mei Xox had contacted Jen that morning to confirm her participation, and arranged to meet up with them in Hong Kong.
“What time and where should I meet you?”
“Oh eight hundred, Orbital kappa four, K deck, berth seventy-five.”
Solinas nodded as he rose to his feet. “Got it. All right then, I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Right.” Jen stood, and the changeling held up one pincer.
“Just a second.” He tugged open her collar slightly, ruffled her hair, and pinched her cheeks to bring a flush to them. “Try to look like you had a good time on the way out, won’t you? I’d hate for people to
think you’d wasted my money.”