Girl From Above #4: Trust (10 page)

I sipped my tea, needing something else to focus on besides Haley’s memories of a father that wasn’t real. “Some.”

“Synthetics do not make mistakes. Do you see why you and I are so perfect? How can we learn if we do not study the errors in our design? We make ourselves better with each decision, with each deduction. We are really quite beautiful.”

“Was shutting down the main gate and killing five thousand people beautiful, Mister Hung?”

He lowered his teacup and rested his hands atop the table on either side of it. “What are five thousand people when measured against future potential? I had to know if I could circumvent Chitec’s many firewalls to learn if my plans were possible.”

“And what plans are those?” I enquired.

He leaned back in his chair and assessed my face. “You know.”

“I do, because I know you.”
Like I know myself.

“The nine systems are dying. You, more than I, must know this. You’ve seen it.” He waited for my acknowledgement and when it didn’t come, he leaned forward, jolting the table and spilling tea from his cup. “Men and women destroy themselves and everything around them. They are weak, flawed creatures. You need only consider their violent history to witness the poison they spread.”

I smiled and Hung flinched. “You cannot judge them by their past.”

I thought of Caleb, of how he’d come for me on Lyra. He could have left me behind to save himself. He was not the same man who’d watched Haley die all those years ago. I thought of Bren, who’d learned from his mistakes and faced the consequences of his actions. And Fran: she’d wanted to do right, but right wasn’t as easy as she’d thought. She too had seen what it meant to change. A wonderful perfection existed in all of their faults. They were not machines. They lived, they loved, they fought, and they tried. They didn’t give up. In small ways, they were each the hero in their own life.
They
were beautiful.

“There is no room in my future for flawed, little people,” Hung said, perhaps hoping I’d agree with him.

“And yet the very traits you want to destroy are the same ones you cherish in your construction. If human beings are faults, errors to be corrected, then so are you, Mister Hung, and so am I.”

He smiled, and of course it brightened his eyes and completed the picture of the Chen Hung who owned the nine systems, but he was broken inside, as I was.

“Let me show you what it means to be perfect, One.” He stood and extended a hand, inviting me to take it.

I rose to my feet, regarded his hand with cool decorum, and then closed my fingers around his. “Where are we going?”

His grip clenched tight enough to spark a small pain response. “To the beginning.”

I
t took some shuffling
, but thanks to Fran cuffing my hands in front of me, I was able to work my comms earpiece free from my pocket and tuck it into my ear.

“—hijacked transport ship. We didn’t believe it would make for the gate. When Gate Control warned of incoming traffic, they stayed their course.”

“Criminals will go to extreme, even suicidal lengths to evade capture, just out of principle.” Fran. She was back in commander mode, her voice edged with enough irritation to certify her officer status. As for the guy she was with, I recognized his smooth tone from the earlier comms call, the hint of Old-Earth accent masked beneath fleet training. Captain Holt. Clearly, he had his suspicions if he’d boarded us himself.

I slumped back against my cabin wall, cuffed hands resting in my lap, and closed my eyes. Fran’s and the captain’s boots thudded through the passageways and over the grating. Others were on board. I counted at least three additional voices above the warbird’s gentle humming. Three wasn’t a lot, but there could be others on the harrier.

Fran was right—of course. She was always fucking right. Someone, maybe Holt, would have recognized my face. He might not have known my name, but his ship’s systems would have flagged
Caleb Shepperd
had he run my sketchy lieutenant details through them. Without the inspection, we might have gotten through unmolested.

“Did they make it through?” Fran asked. Holt must have given her a questioning look, because she added, “The transport?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know what happened to the transport? Was it stopped?”

“No.” Holt cleared his throat. “We were about to pursue when the order came down from Command to desist.”

“Command ordered you to stand down while in pursuit of a hijacked vessel? That’s … unusual.”

“Mm, we’ve had some—shall we say—interesting orders from Command as of late. But ours is not to question why, as I’m sure you’re well aware, Commander.”

Fran thought the transport was One and Doctor Lloyd.
Shit.
If that was the case, either One had deviated from the Nine’s orders and stirred up trouble—which was entirely likely, given her fondness for mayhem—or something had happened aboard that transport. Something like One killing Lloyd. It wasn’t unexpected. Frankly, I was surprised he’d survived at all in her company. But why had Command ordered fleet not to pursue? That order could only have come down from Chitec. Perhaps they didn’t want fleet getting their hands on sensitive Chitec cargo, such as the rogue synthetic known as #1001?

“Your clearance documents detail a code-eight fugitive but no name?” Holt’s polite enquiry filtered through the comms link, interrupting my concerns.

“That’s correct, Captain.”

Fran had hesitated. Holt wouldn’t have caught it, but I had. Maybe my bullshit radar was finally working on Fran, for all the good it did me. Or maybe I could filter through her lies when I wasn’t distracted by her getting in my face.

“Warbirds aren’t known for their prisoner facilities. Where are you keeping him?” Holt asked.

“In an aft cabin.”

“The harrier you’re towing is his?”

“Stolen goods. I’m returning it to Old Earth for processing.”

“And the fugitive? Where are you taking him?”

“What makes you think I need to answer that,
Captain
?”

A smile crawled across my lips. Right about now, Holt was getting the military glare. The one that had probably made recruits quiver in their pristine whites.

“We’re on an extreme alert level,
Commander.
In this case, my authority
supersedes yours.”

My smile grew. “Man, you do not want to get on her bad side. She’ll stab you in it.”

“I’d like to see the prisoner.”

Oh joy.
I gave my cabin a quick once-over. I hadn’t spent long enough in it to leave any incriminating evidence on display, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t any. For all I knew, Fran could be setting me up to take the fall for a whole world of shit I wasn’t even guilty of. Although, fleet only suspected me for a fraction of the crimes I’d committed. Toss in a few arms deals, drug hauls, and sabotage, and they’d be getting closer to the true extent of my talents.

The cabin door opened. I saluted Fran with my cuffed hands. “I really need to piss. Could you help with that, Commander?”

Holt looked down his straight nose at me. I arched a brow. Late thirties, slender frame, wiry, clean-shaven face. Typical fleet.

He curled his lip and he asked Fran, “Why is he wearing a lieutenant’s uniform?”

“Thought he could slip through the gate checks posing as an officer.”

Holt scoffed and peered down at me. “It takes more than a uniform to make an officer.”

“Like the ability to bend over and take Chitec up the ass?”

Holt’s eyes narrowed. “Do you have a problem with fleet officers, sir?”

I opened my mouth to speak but Fran beat me to it. “Knowing when to mind his manners is one of many, many problems this man has.”

Manners? I’d seen her teach some of the most barbaric smugglers a whole new vocabulary of insults, drink them all under the table, and then rifle through their pockets for credits. “Honey, you say the sweetest things.”

Holt caught my overly familiar tone. “Do you know this man, Commander?”

Fran didn’t dignify the remark with anything other than professional distance. “In his fantasies, he likes to think so. Have you seen enough, Captain Holt?” She turned away. “I know I have.”

I showed Holt my middle finger as he closed the door. I still had the comms in, so I heard all the wonderful things Holt had to say about bottom-feeding scum, but Fran was entirely professional, and she kept my name off the record. If we ever got out of this, I’d be grateful for that.

I had a while to stew on whether she’d be back to let me go or hand me over to fleet to get safe passage through the gate. After what she’d told me about Treno, it would appear she didn’t need me to press the remote trigger. She’d seemed pretty cut up about the idea back on the Island though, like maybe she wasn’t the cold-hearted bitch she’d been in fleet. Who was I to judge what she’d done in fleet? It wasn’t like I hadn’t watched Hung kill his daughter to get a promotion.

I bumped my head back and thought my way around the inevitable guilt trip I was heading for.
A synthetic killed Haley.
It didn’t change anything; it didn’t bring her back. I could even argue that, had I played the hero that night, we both would’ve died. At least this way we were trying to do the right thing, even if that meant killing a whole lot of people. When did the right thing become the wrong thing? Where was the line? It sure felt like this was the line, and if I pressed that trigger, I’d be crossing it. There had to be another way, but I’d yet to find one, and if we got through the gate, we’d be that much closer to mass murder.

The cabin door rattled open. Fran leaned a shoulder against the seal and crossed her arms. “They’re gone. We got clearance.”

I couldn’t bring myself to smile up at her.

She reached inside her coat and retrieved her dagger, the one with the tarnished flanks and notched blade. The same one that had seen my insides. Probably the same dagger that had killed the foxes in their bunks.

I held out my cuffed wrists. “Reckon you can cut me free.”

She pressed the tip of the blade against her finger and gave it a thoughtful twirl.

“Any time now,” I added, rattling the cuffs. “What with me trusting you an’ all.”

“If I let you go, you gotta promise me something.”

“Don’t you mean
when
you let me go?”

“I have a plan.”

“Oh?” Something told me I wouldn’t like this plan.

“You agree to hear me out and consider it.”

“Sure. I can do that.” I shoved my bound wrists forward. “Now do the honors.”

Whatever her plan was, my agreement to listen to it brightened her smile. She leaned in and cut the wrap-cuffs with one quick upward thrust. I made a show of rubbing my wrists while side-eyeing her dagger and got to my feet. “So tell me about your plan.”

“Once we’re through the gate.”

W
e passed
through the gate without a hitch. Holt must have been eager to get processed and away from his responsibilities.

We’d powered unmolested through the choked gate zone in the original system and were a few universal hours out of Janus. Fran was sitting in her flight chair, hunched over her holoscreen. She had shrugged out of her jacket and ruffled her hair, deliberately shedding her fleet persona. I preferred her this way, scruffy and steely-eyed. I was sitting beside her, watching the stars drift. Last time I’d been in the original system, fleet had tried to shoot me out of the black and then thrown a firing squad at me on Ganymede. Seemed like a lifetime ago. Now I was back, carrying with me a fuckload of explosives for the Fenrir Nine that was destined for Hung, Chitec, Janus, and all those poor bastards going about their daily lives. Life sure did have a fucked-up sense of humor.

“You ever think about what might have happened if you hadn’t joined fleet?”

My mood, already sour, turned acidic. “I try not to.”

The old scars on my back itched.

Fran shot me a frown. She’d clearly forgotten fleet had been a way out for me, an escape from the hell I’d grown up in.

“I was going to manage my own shipping fleet,” she added, remembering quickly enough to divert the attention away from my past. “The routes through the nine systems, they’re based on old shipping lanes from before the Blackout. Out by Calisto, for one, there’s a route that runs wide around an old recycling rig. That rig probably broke up years ago. It’d save on fuel and time to reroute right through that sector.”

“You, a shipping merchant?”

“Yeah.”

I couldn’t see it. She didn’t have it in her to shuffle ships around the nine systems; she’d rather be front and center, staring adversity in the face while giving it the finger.

“You don’t think I could do it?” she asked.

“You could, but it would be the wrong move. You’re not that person.”

“I might have been. Fleet changed me.”

I smiled a lazy, drawn-out smile and sent it her way. “The nine systems changed you. It does that to folks. The black gets under your skin until you only feel right when you’re out here, no strings attached and looking at that.”

I swept a hand at the obs window and the masterpiece of stars beyond. Saturn, the old girl with her rings, hung to Fran’s right, little more than a smudge against the black, but a smudge I recognized well. The original system and Old Earth, for all its faults, had been my home.

She was looking out at the blanket of scattered diamond dust. The glow from the warbird’s instruments moved over her face, smoothing out the lines around her lips and eyes.

“What about after?” I asked. “After all this, when we split, what are you going to do then?”

Her focus stuttered and her gaze dropped. “Check your screen.”

I lingered a little longer, watching the light fade from her eyes, and then checked my screen. All I saw was a crisscrossing maze of intersecting lines.

“Janus maintenance plans.” She flicked her screen and mine changed, pulling back to reveal Janus in all her spinning-top glory.

“I know what Janus looks like,” I grumbled. She zoomed in again, fast enough to make my head spin, and we were back to the lines again, this time intercepted by channels and numbers. “Now I have no idea what I’m looking at.”

“
You
don’t need to.”

I was getting that sinking feeling in my gut again, the one that went all the way down and grabbed my balls, and not in a pleasant way. Fear—but not for me. “Spit it out, Fran.”

“A explosion like the one from our tonnage will rip Janus dock wide open and breach the habitable environment. It’s a clumsy attack—a scattergun approach. Blow it all to shit and nobody survives.”

“You got a better idea?”

She faced me, her eyes cool, lips grim. “I do, but you won’t like it.”

“I already figured as much.”

“There’s a way to get a ship inside the station.”

“Well yeah, it’s called a dock. C’mon, Fran. Just tell me what the fuck you’re skirting around so I can get with the arguing.”

Her grim lips slanted sideways. “I’m going to fly the harrier inside Janus and strike right at Hung’s towers.”

I waited a beat, expecting a “Ha, fooled you,” and then, when she looked back at me, her face the picture of deadpan, a laugh jolted free. She had to be high.

“Oh man, that’s priceless. Tell me again how you’re going to”—I cut the laugh, gritted my teeth, and growled—“fly through a fucking maze.” I stabbed a finger at her. “Because that kinda shit right there is what’s called suicide.”

A muscle in her cheek twitched. “Are you done?”

“Honey, I haven’t even gotten started.” I kicked my boots up on the flight controls and sank in my chair. “You can’t. And this isn’t my ego sayin’,
‘I can’t handle girls who know their shit.’
Even if you could get a harrier inside Janus, there ain’t no airspace to fly in. It’s all spokes on a wheel in there. Impossible. Even for you.”
The best damn pilot in the nine systems.

I met her stalwart gaze and knew she wouldn’t give up on this. What she was suggesting, even if it were possible, was madness. She couldn’t land the harrier outside Hung’s towers without all of Janus Security coming down on her. She couldn’t walk away. That meant, when the cargo blew, she’d be right there at ground zero.

“No,” I snarled.

“I’ve gone over the specs again and again. It can be done.”

“No.”

“The artificial gravity will screw with the harrier’s gyros, but the harrier’s grav dampeners will level her out. I’ve already plotted a course. It might get tight around the elevator hub, but the numbers say it’s doable. Simple.”

Flying through or around crisscross trusses, pipes, ducts, and shit not on her maintenance charts? Sure, simple. Jaw glued shut, I glared out of the obs window and searched the black for another solution.

“There’s another way,” I mumbled with zero conviction.