The Nexus Series: Books 1-3 (20 page)

3

A
young
black man walked along the port’s main corridor.  “Got it, 337. 
Thanks, Jill,” he said, leaning close to his collar.

The port was not
in the city itself but deep within in the inner workings of MS9.  Its
shuttle bays were along the eastern edge of the satellite, facing Earth. 
Dozens of shuttles, some for cargo and others for travelers, arrived from and
departed for Earth every day.  The port was busy.  It always was. 
Waiting areas lined the shuttle bays on one side of the wide, tiled
corridor.  Restaurants, gift shops, coffee shops, and bars lined the other
side.

In a way it was
strange that there was so much traffic between the planet and the satellite.
 As a rule, Anterrans and Earthsiders didn’t like each other much. 
Residents of the Home Planet thought of
Metropolitan Satellite IX
as a
den of crooks; MS9 residents thought of Earth’s citizens as arrogant
snobs. 

And yet travel
from Earth to Anterra was constant.  There were the tourist groups, of
course.  They weren’t hard to spot: teens or college students marching
around with matching T-shirts, giggling and gawking while their leaders barked
impatiently at them.  Then there were the suit-wearing,
brief-case-carrying, never-smiling business travelers, and the vacationers
chasing their kids around whenever they weren’t snapping pictures of
everything, including the port’s decorative fountains and gift shop
facades.  And plenty of others.  It was an easy place to blend in.

Now a young woman
with long blonde hair approached the young man.

“Just in time,”
he told her as they started walking together through the crowded
corridor.  “Jill just gave me the location.  How was your day off?”

Amber usually
smiled—especially around Corey.  But she wasn’t smiling now.  “Fine,”
she answered him flatly.

Corey didn’t
press her.

A bunch of middle
school students in unattractive lime-green T-shirts shuffled past them. 
The port’s public address system barked that the shuttle bound for Tokyo would
be boarding in bay 211 in fifteen minutes.  Music thumped from a sports
bar as they walked by.

They arrived at
their destination.  The lit block numbers 337 hung over the waiting
area.  Red leather seats sat empty in the dim light.  This shuttle
wouldn’t be departing until tomorrow afternoon.

They crossed the
waiting area to a bank of windows overlooking the bay itself.  Cordova’s
shuttle sat in the center of the open space.  Banks of halogen lights
reflected on its sleek surface.  A robotic tank prepared to fuel the shuttle,
and a mechanic tinkered near one of the fins.  The crew of three—pilot,
copilot, and stewardess—appeared to be relaxing on board at the moment.

Behind the
shuttle was the wide, ridged door of the bay.  Through the airlock beyond
that door were miles and miles of emptiness between MS9 and the Home Planet.

“It’s a Gleason,”
Amber observed.  “Looks like an older model, too.”

“Not a shipping
vessel, is it?” asked Corey.

“No, it’s for
passengers.  Lots of smugglers prefer passenger vessels.  Less
suspicious.  He probably used the storage compartment behind the aft
lavatory.  That would be the best place.”

He looked
impressed.  “You weren’t lying when you said you knew your stuff.”

She
shrugged.  “I’ve done my research.”

“Okay, let’s
dress for the occasion.”

JILL’S
skybike hummed thirty feet above the Aurora Bridge.  Skytraffic thinned
the farther she got from downtown.  Across the bridge she dropped to
ground level and angled along the street north of the lake.  The Avenue of
Towers reflected on the lake behind her.  In the center of the lake glowed
the thousand windows of the massive island structure known as Go-Com—Anterra’s
Governmental Complex.

She kept heading
east along the lake toward the distant form of Earth.  She passed through
the industrial area on the far side of the lake and entered the suburban
neighborhoods of Anterra’s eastern rim.  Signs over the boulevard began
pointing traffic to the Kichiro Yamanashi Port, named for one of the chief
engineers of the United Space Programs who had designed Anterra.

“Jill,” Amber’s
voice sounded in the earpiece of her riding helmet.

“What’s up?”

“We can stick
with plan A.  I recognize the shuttle model.  There’s really only one
place where they could have hidden the cargo.”

“Perfect.”

“But you’ll have
to make some...structural modifications to get inside.”

Jill
smiled.  “Too bad for Mr. Cordova.”  Or whatever his name was. 
“So what do I do?”

A
few
minutes later Jill exited off the boulevard toward the port.  The road
dropped below the surface of the city.  She flowed with the traffic down
the winding tunnel until she reached the port’s vast multi-layered parking
area.

She walked
through the sliding glass doors into the port’s main stretch.  Crowd noise
interspersed with public address announcements echoed from the wide corridor’s
vaulted ceiling.

She came to the
gift shop she was looking for.  The display windows featured mannequins in
shirts and sweatshirts with ANTERRA scribed proudly across them.  Some
included MS9’s tourism catchphrase of the season:  “Out of this
world.”  Jill shook her head.  Juvenile.

Next to the shop
a small hallway branched away from the central area of the port.  At the
end of the hallway was a private locker room, reserved for use tonight by the
Anterran Government.  Jill punched in the security code and entered the
small waiting area before the men’s and women’s sections of the locker room.

Corey Stone and
Amber Phoenix greeted her.  Corey was standing a little closer to Amber
than Jill would have preferred, but whatever.

“Let’s do this,”
Corey said with a smile.

Jill forced a
smile back.  “Let’s.”

THE
shuttle’s pilot was sitting just off the flight deck reading a
less-than-reputable magazine when the copilot interrupted him.  “Captain?”

“Thought you went
to grab a latte from the port shops,” the captain said through a frown.

“They want to
search her,” the copilot said nervously.

The pilot set his
magazine aside and stood, alarmed.  “Who?”

“Feds.”  The
copilot jerked a thumb out the window.

Two figures stood
on the shuttle bay floor.  They were armed and wore armored black uniforms
similar to what Anterran cops wore.

“Great,” mumbled
the captain.

“They won’t find
anything,” the copilot said stiffly, not believing his own words.

“Seven years I
been in this business and nothing’s gone wrong,” said the captain.  He
didn’t mean the shuttle business.

The rolling
stairway was still positioned at the shuttle’s door.  The captain emerged
at the top, smiled, and gestured for the uniformed pair to approach.

“The Government
of Anterra has found reason to search you vessel, sir,” one of them said. 
This one had a silver skull enameled on his helmet.  The voice was tinny
and fake sounding.

The other
produced a screen displaying official ID and the sealed search warrant. 
This officer had a flaming red emblem on her visor.

“Really sorry
about this, sir,” the first one said.  “Bureau of Travel is a little jumpy
these days.  They hear any rumors at all and we have to check it
out.  You know how it goes.”

“Sure,” the
captain said through a toothy smile.

“You and the
other crew are free to stay aboard,” the mechanical voice said, “But we’ll have
to ask the other personnel to leave, I’m afraid.”  The uniformed guy
gestured to the mechanic and the fuel-
bot
operator.

The captain
nodded to them, and they disappeared through a door off the side of the bay.

“Make yourselves
at home,” the captain said, gesturing inside the shuttle.

“Thanks,
captain.  Out of your hair in a couple minutes.”

THE
mechanic and fuel-
bot
operator headed up a dark
passage toward the nearest port employee break room.  They exchanged a
coarse jest or two as they passed a figure dressed in dark coveralls.

Jill nodded a
brief greeting at them as she walked by them toward the maintenance entrance to
bay 337.

She opened the
door a crack.

The bay was
mostly dark, with just one bank of lights flickering dimly above the
shuttle.  Through the vessel’s windows she could see Corey, Amber, and the
crew.

She darted across
the bay floor.

“WHO
blew the whistle?” the stewardess said out of the side of her mouth.

“Wasn’t me!” the
copilot insisted.

“Shut up, will
you?” the captain hissed at them.

They watched as
nonchalantly as possible while the two uniformed figures roamed along the rows
of empty passenger seats.  The one with the flaming emblem approached the
aft lavatory.

The stewardess
tensed.  The copilot started
wringing
his hands.

“Relax,” the
captain whispered.  “There’s no way....”

They weren’t
looking behind them, where the other officer was doing something with their
communications equipment.

The female
officer emerged empty-handed from the lavatory a moment later.

The crew shared a
sigh of relief.

SILENTLY
Jill slunk beneath the shuttle and examined its polished underbelly.  She
found the airtight hatch that accessed the lavatory tank and opened it as
silently as possible.  The thick, sealed door hissed open.

There was just
room for her to slip inside next to the currently empty tank.  Above her
was the shape of the lavatory floor.  Next to it was the underside of the
compartment she was looking for.  She used a small laser cutter to make an
opening and peeked up inside.

A small
flashlight showed her the compartment.  It was empty except for a single
small storage bin.

That was odd.

She hoisted
herself into the compartment and checked the bin.  It wasn’t even
locked.  Inside was....

This was
really
odd.  She was about to report it to Corey, but she stopped herself. 
They had to finish here.  There would be time to discuss it later.

“READY,”
Jill’s
voice crackled in Corey and Amber’s helmets.

Amber poked
around the shuttle’s maintenance closet a moment longer before closing the
door.  Corey was just emerging from the bridge.  They met in the
center of the cabin.

“Clean,” she
said, her visor’s speaker disguising her voice.

“You checked the
closet?” he asked her.

“Nothing you
wouldn’t expect to find in a shuttle’s closet.”

“Good.  Big
surprise.”

They approached
the crew, who were watching but pretending not to.

“Sorry again
about the fuss, captain,” said Corey.

“No problem,” he
said, showing his teeth again.

“Let’s grab
dinner,” he told Amber as they descended the stairs to the bay floor. 
“I’m starving.”

“You’re always
starving,” her mechanical voice shot back.

“Check it,” the
captain said when they’d disappeared.

The copilot
wrinkled his forehead.  “We were watching them the whole time.  They
didn’t—”

“Just check it.”

The copilot
shrugged.  “Fine, I’ll check it.”

In the aft
lavatory he fiddled under the sink while the captain and stewardess watched.

A section of the
lavatory wall slid aside.

The storage bin
was still in the compartment.

“Look inside.”

“You’re
paranoid.”

“Just—”

“I’m looking, I’m
looking!”

The storage bin
was empty.

The captain
cursed.

“Should we call
him?” the stewardess asked.

The captain shook
his head.  “He said don’t call.”

“But the goods—”
began the copilot.

“He said
don’t
call
,” the pilot said firmly.  “This isn’t our problem.”

“It is if we
don’t get paid,” mumbled the stewardess.

COREY
and Amber went back into the port, past the gift shop, and into the locker
room’s waiting area.

“Let us know if
they contact the client, Dizzie,” said Corey.

“Will do,”
Dizzie’s voice replied in their ears.

They removed
their helmets.

“Dizzie won’t
know if they contact the client,” said Amber.

Corey looked at
her questioningly.  “Their cell phones were automatically tied to Sherlock
the minute they entered the port.  And if they try reaching him on their
shuttle com, I rigged it—”

“They’ll notice
you’ve tampered with their com unit, Cor.  They’ll check before they even
think about using it.”

He
shrugged.  “Well, I doubt they’ll use it anyway.  Unless they decide
to check on the cargo and find it missing.”

“Oh they’ll
check, all right.”

Corey’s look
turned suspicious.  “You seem pretty sure of yourself.”

Before Amber
could respond, Jill stepped through the door into the locker room’s waiting
area.  She didn’t look thrilled.

“What’s wrong?”
Amber asked her.

Jill reached into
her pack.  She pulled out a bound notebook and a rather bulky
camera.  “This is the cargo.”

“That’s it?”

Jill
nodded.  “Something isn’t right.”

Corey scratched
his head.  “Not exactly what we were expecting.”

“This is for
artists’ snapshots,” Jill said, gesturing at the camera.  She picked up
the notebook and flipped through the blank lined pages.  “And this is a
diary.”

“Journal,” said
Corey.