He ran a hand over his close-cropped scalp. “Still not used to looking like a marine,” he confessed as he studied his brown, lady-killer eyes. A guy named Terry had given him the faint scar on his chin. Only a slight lump marred the straight line of his nose, legacy of his days in Hong Kong. Tough city, Hong Kong. But there was money to be made. At least until the big guys caught on.
He grinned at himself, half expecting his skull to grin back. With a little imagination he could see it, trace the hollow gaping of the orbits, the emptiness of the nose, see the arch of the cheek bones. In his imagination the image solidified. Haunting. Prophetic.
That’s how I’ll look someday. A bare skull. Flesh gone. Teeth grinning. The bone stained from long-rotted-away tissue.
For the moment, the gamble had paid off. He’d made it. Once down there, even if they ever discovered who he really was, he could disappear. Vanish again.
Ought to say good-bye to Nandi.
But then he hadn’t said good-bye to Cylie. Which was the only reason she was still alive.
“So much for the past.” He grunted, thinking back to what Cylie had cost him. The clever cunt had been smart enough to run.
She would have divorced him by now. Gone on to another man—gullible little slut that she was. Not that she’d ever fix her life. She had needed him to run it for her. And if he knew anything, it was how to run a woman.
At least until Nandi.
How the hell had that gone wrong? How had he misread her so completely that when he put a little pressure on her, she got her back up and told him to fuck off? And when he started to teach her a thing or two, the slit had shoved a gun in his face? Seriously?
“Got to hand it to her, she’s got guts.”
Which decided him. He stepped out of the lavatory, walked down the cramped sialon tunnel. Regularly spaced light panels illuminated the fiber optic cables, conduit, pipes, and wiring where it snaked its way overhead. The walls were broken by inspection hatches, emergency gear lockers, and doorways set flush with the ship’s hull. The familiar closeness pressed in.
He climbed up a tube ladder and found the com cubby empty. Sliding into the seat, he accessed the system. “Astrogation. Nandi, please.”
“One moment,” the voice told him.
Within seconds her face formed on the holo. Immediately her expression tightened. “What do you want, Dan?”
She sat before the spectrometer, her dark eyes troubled. He’d seen a picture of her before she spaced, and had marveled at her thick and long black hair. Now her close-shaved scalp gleamed in the overhead lights. The angles of her triangular face, high cheeks, and pointed chin made her a beautiful woman. Her uniform looked rumpled, the lieutenant’s bars on her shoulders perfectly placed.
“To say I’m sorry. That I lost it that night.” He gave her his innocent grin. “Never had a woman put me in my place like that. Wanted to say that there’s no hard feelings.” Yeah, right.
She gave a faint shake of the head. “I don’t know what I ever saw in you. I . . . Wait. That’s a lie. I knew exactly what you were. Always wanted to try a dangerous man. See if what they said about them was true. Literature is full of them. The cunning rogue brought to heel by a good woman. Learned my lesson right quick.”
“Sorry. Must be a relief to make Donovan.”
He saw the pinching behind her eyes. She said nothing.
“What’s wrong, Nandi?”
She wet her lips, gave a slight shrug. “Freelander didn’t arrive. Never made it.”
He remembered that her fiancée worked as an astrogator on Freelander.
“So? They got delayed. Maybe had a problem and had to stop and—”
“Damn you, Cowboy, you never understand, do you?”
“Well, hell, equipment, especially in these ships, with all the computers and number crunching—”
“They were nine months ahead of us. Neptune had them on the monitors when Freelander inverted symmetry and went null.”
He waited, not sure what that meant.
She sighed. “You may know how to slip along the underbelly of life and run games, Wirth, but don’t ever try and pilot a starship. You don’t just stop in space and fix things. Not in inverted symmetry. You either make it, or you don’t.”
“Sorry.”
“Hey, it happens. Space doesn’t come free.” She paused, a dead emptiness behind her eyes. “You’re a gambler. You know what the real figures are? Each time we space we’ve got an eighty percent chance of making it across the inversion.”
“But I thought . . .” He frowned.
“Sure you did. The Corporation lies. You think they’d be able to space if the truth became known? Damn it, Dan, each of these ships is experimental. Each subtly different in design. That’s the spinoff that’s making The Corporation money.”
He kept his expression blank.
“Think about it, Cowboy. This ship’s a kilometer and a half long and over two kilometers wide—and we live like rats in a rice can. So cramped that everyone’s elbow is shoved up someone else’s ass. Turalon is all engine and generator with a tiny payload perched on top. The under-the-table figure is that it costs The Corporation fifteen thousand SDRs a kilo to ship past Tau Ceti.”
“Then why do it if one out of every five ships is lost?”
She gave him a bitter smile. “It’s the money, Dan. Kenji and I, this was our last run. If we both got home we were going to cash out. Buy our own island and grow old in the sun and surf.”
She lowered her eyes. “Listen. I’m talking too much. Saying things I’d never say if . . .”
When no more was forthcoming, he said, “Yeah, I know. Like I said, I’m sorry. Go with God.”
He cut the connection, thinking, Shit and shine, doesn’t matter what I did back there, they’ll never catch me now.
8
“So, what’s the word?” Talina asked as Trish Monagan came striding into the administration dome.
“Did you sleep last night?”
“Hell, no.” Talina rubbed her eyes, easing back on her crutches. Her dreams had been filled with bizarre sights and sensations. In one, she’d been flashing across a flat dotted with aquajade trees, a small herd of chamois fleeing before her. The weirdest part had been the sensation of air rushing through her body, the blur of her legs.
So fucking vivid!
She’d jerked awake, quivering and sweating.
Just at the thought, her eyes ached, and the shimmer of color swam at the edges of her vision.
You’d think I had a quetzal inside me.
She glanced down the corridor, seeing Yvette where she supervised the removal of the last of the storage that had been piled in Supervisor Clemenceau’s office. It wouldn’t look pristine when Kalico Aguila set foot in it, but it at least gave the illusion that Port Authority still respected The Corporation and its people.
Trish arched her back and made a face as she relieved strained muscles. Step Allenovich froze, gaze fixing on the strained fabric that outlined Trish’s breasts.
“Hey!” Talina snapped. “Eyes back in your head, or trot your ass off to Betty’s and deal with it in a way that’s productive for the economy.”
Stepan shot her a wink and bowed gallantly to Trish before he carried his box of reports into Shig’s office.
Trish sighed. “I guess someone still sees me as a woman. That’s something, at least.”
“The way you look? I wouldn’t think you’d have trouble attracting a man.”
“I grew up with two guys and two other girls in my age group. They’re married to each other, having kids. And the slim pickings that are left don’t excite me.” She glanced upward. “Maybe there’s a whole new selection headed my way.”
“Count on it, but remember they’re soft meat. And they’ve had two years to pair up in that damn ship.”
 
; “Soft meat. Crap. Guess I could go to work for Betty if I want the occasional taste of sex, huh?”
“Trish, you got something I need to know? Or did you plan on discussing your libido all morning?”
“I’ve got ammo stashed all around the compound. Same with weapons. All of it in personal space. Places where the Skulls won’t think to look. Or would get hurt trying. If the Supervisor pulls anything boneheaded, like confiscating weapons, we can be rearmed and ready within an hour.” She fished in her pocket. “And here’s Raya’s list of meds to be forwarded up to the ship.”
Talina took it, read down the names. Phenothyazionate? What the hell was that? It was bad enough that Donovan killed people with an insolent regularity. The fact that solid folks like Mitch had died for lack of something as simple as megacillin was like a thorn in the soul. A case of antibiotics didn’t mass much, and it would last for years.
Meanwhile, Lee Cheng, their botanical chemist, worked feverishly to come up with local alternatives to terrestrial medicines. He spent his days collecting plants, running them through spectography, FTIR, and every other kind of analysis before hunching over his pestle and mortar much as his ancestors in Beijing had a couple of centuries back. Lack of a sophisticated centrifuge added to his labors, and the scanning electron microscopy unit had ceased to function three years ago. Something inside had burned out, and the guy who knew how to fix it had died when a slug ate its way into his leg.
“Just keep the lid on, huh? The first shuttle’s due in a couple of hours. We kowtow to the Supervisor, ritually install her in her office, and bury our asses in processing the soft meat as they come down.” She paused. “God, I hope they have coffee.”
Talina made a face. “Think about it, they’ve been locked away in that sky-rolling death trap for two years. Want to bet but that they want to kill each other by now?”
“Maybe we ought to sell them fresh air,” Trish suggested. “Half a yuan a breath. Stimulate the economy.”
Behind her, the door opened, and Shig leaned out. “Talina, will reality cease if I ask for a moment of your time?”
“Probably. The universe is full of conundrums, Shig.” She gave Trish a “carry on” nod and hobbled along on her crutches as Shig led the way into his cramped office. The room didn’t measure more than two meters by four. Of the three computers only one remained functional. Last she’d heard someone had pirated the guts out of the broken machines and left the empty consoles. Shig never liked throwing anything away.
Passing his cramped desk, he led her straight through, out the door on the other side, and into the stack yard with its rows of sialon crates piled four high. Each was filled with rare-earth elements, clay from the mine, ore, specimens. The wealth of Donovan—paid for with blood, sweat, and lives—waited for the stars.
At the main gate to the shuttle pad, Shig stopped and gestured around. “You think this will do for check-in? Maybe use a crate for a desk? Bring out a chair? If we leave the big gate closed, use only the smaller man gate, they’ll have to come through one at a time. Maybe keep Trish and Step on either side with a rifle to look mean and ensure they don’t get out of hand.”
Talina glanced up at the partly cloudy sky. “What if it rains?”
“They’ll get wet. What about it?”
She gave him a sly grin. “All right. What have we got? Four hundred of them. Fifty per shuttle? It’ll take all afternoon, and if we don’t get through them, we’re gonna have to cancel the last loads.”
Talina squinted across the hard-packed landing field, dotted as it was with green-blue weeds. Long time since a shuttle had set down. “We don’t want anybody on the other side of the fence after dark. Being eaten within hours of landing could be detrimental to morale.”
“If you could process the first couple of shuttles, I’ll take over as soon as I can get free of the Supervisor. Or maybe it will be Yvette, depending on who gets along the best with her.”
“You don’t sound optimistic.”
Shig lifted his round shoulders in a weary shrug and slitted his eyes as he stared up at Capella. The slight smile on his broad lips gave his walnut-brown face an almost beatific expression. He sniffed, as if savoring the subtle scents of Donovan: damp soil, musty, tinged by the cardamom-like odor of the plants and the breezes blowing in off the Gulf.
At last he said, “Judging from the supervisor’s questions? Her terse demands? I get the impression that she is not impressed with our competence and may wish to make changes in the way Port Authority is administered.”
“Might fire us, huh?” Talina leaned forward on her crutches and scuffed the clay with a booted toe. “Be a shame, wouldn’t it? Corporation slap. Think I’ll miss that couple hundred thousand SDRs they’ll withhold? Might put a dent in my lavish lifestyle.”
Shig sniffed again, nostrils flaring. “Gonna rain tonight.”
“Yep.”
“Supervisor Aguila has informed us that she is bringing twenty marines with her. Assuming The Corporation hasn’t changed its stripes, I would expect them to have chosen combat veterans on the off chance that the missing ships might be tied to some social upheaval on our end. Perhaps piracy as we commandeered their vessels and crews.” He shot her a sloe-eyed look. “Perhaps mutiny?”
“Twenty marines in battle tech could wipe this place flat. We wouldn’t stand a chance.”
“Nope.”
She studied the pale tints in the sky. In little more than an hour the shuttle would descend. There would be questions. Uncomfortable questions. The kind none of them wanted to answer.
The wide expanse of the shuttle field had once been bounded by a perimeter fence—one they had torn down and used to strengthen the town’s defenses. Now the pad gave way to what they called “grass,” a composite of low-growing native plants that finally surrendered to brushland a couple of kilometers away. As long as a person didn’t look too closely, the long thin leaves could almost make you believe you were on Earth. Cheng had concocted a paste from the stems that soothed burns.
“Have to keep someone on this gate at night,” Shig reminded. “The soft meat won’t understand that if they go out after dark, they’re most likely a meal.” He paused. “I think you need to consider the possibility that you might be ordered to return on the Turalon. Perhaps for reposting at Transluna or one of the colonies.”
“Go back? Not a chance, Shig. And they can’t make me. My contract was for ten years, and it was up six months ago.”
“So what would you do? Couldn’t stay in town. Go wild?”
“In a minute. You know that.”
“The Corporation made an investment in you. Your contract might be up, but security has a twenty-year enlistment. You don’t have the rank to resign. Got to be at least a captain.”
She set the crutches to one side and settled herself on a crate, palms on her knees as she stared out across the field. “Sometimes investments go bad, Shig. Sure, I graduated at the top of my class in law enforcement and Corporate security. Almost went military, but jumped at the chance for Donovan because I figured a stint out here would give me a leg up on the competition. Do my time, meet the terms of my contract, and space back to a big cash bonus and a cushy job as head of security on one of the stations. Maybe the nanotech center at Transluna.”
“Good position . . . if you could get it. Money, medical, excellent housing, vacation time, and lots of power and status.”
As the breeze played with her long black hair, she noticed a loose thread in the patch over her knee. Flipping out her fighting knife she severed it and let it fall to the trampled clay.
“Bet I’d have nice, snazzy new uniforms to wear, too.” She grinned up at him as she slipped her knife back in its sheath. “You know what? I lay in bed at night sometimes and think about it. After what we’ve been through here, Shig? I could almost write my own contract back yonder. But I’m not that same woman anymo
re. Some administrator in a tailored suit would walk up to me, puffed up with his authority, seek to impress me with his masculinity. First thing, I’d look to see if he had blood under his fingernails. All I’d see is soft meat. That would make it pretty hard to get along with the bosses. I wouldn’t fit, couldn’t be part of the team.”
She sighed. “My guess? I’d be a very unhappy person. So, there it is. I’m a bad investment. I’ll take the bush, thank you.”
“In the event things deteriorate here, there’s a cache of supplies—including ammunition and survival gear—under the white rock at Two Falls Gap. If you need it, it’s yours.”
“Think you know me pretty well, huh?”
“I remember your arrival. You were young, excited, and so very sure you knew everything. You needed Donovan. The wilderness. A matching of spirits and souls. You came here to sell water by the river.”
“Sell what? You spouting more of that Hindu crap?”
“Buddhist.”
“Shig, you know, most of the time I don’t understand a word you’re saying.”
“It would surprise me if you did. You have a very young soul. Still immature and questing.”
“You want to explain that?”
“The soul must experience many lifetimes to learn the lessons it needs to find enlightenment. This is one of your first lives—just as a student needs to take introductory courses and gain a foundation of knowledge before going on to more advanced classes. If you refuse to learn, and fail, you must retake the class. As the soul learns, it integrates, gains an understanding of existence and reality. Passion becomes balanced with wisdom and understanding. Your emotions will become integrated.”
“And how many lifetimes does it take?”
“That’s up to you.”