Life is a crime wave, p.13
Life is a Crime Wave, page 13
Thoughts of core-world condominiums and colonial ranches flashed through Chuck’s head. But he wasn’t sold yet. “Why you being so accommodating? You could have made sure Mort and I went down with one ship or another.”
“Sure. Any time I wanted. But what I need more than a couple corpses are allies.”
There it was.
This was motive.
This could explain everything, if Chuck just got one additional question answered. “Allies for what?”
“It’s time for a change in leadership in the Rucker Syndicate. I need you two to help me take over, and to do that, Theo Rucker needs to die.”
The hour was late, but she’d seen later. Tania Rucker carried her high heels by the straps hooked over a finger. Thick carpets massaged her feet as she crossed the third-floor landing. Hardwood beneath creaked under the stupid bulk of Irwin and Danny, the bodyguards on her detail tonight, as they trailed two paces behind her.
Tania stopped at her bedroom door. Danny stepped ahead of her, opened it, and checked inside, blaster drawn.
“Clear.”
She walked past him, and the pair took up positions to either side of her door.
“Pleasant dreams, Miss Tania.”
“Goodnight, Miss Tania.”
She didn’t return the robotic goodnights. They closed the door behind her.
Trudging forward into the room, letting the high heels slip from her fingers along the way, she headed for the trophy case. Karate. Tae Kwon Do. Judo. Wrestling. A medal for a junior weightlifting competition hung from a holo-emitter of her winning 65 kg lift. A pair of silver ice skates from the Miss Magic Mars competition.
Beside the trophies, memories of a childhood stuffed with manufactured wonders abounded. A framed concert t-shirt signed by Sybil from Sybil and the Sunspots. Ticket stubs from the 2540 Gold League Championship. Holos of exotic vacations to Caledonia, Neptune, Vegas Prime, and many others.
Trash.
The Miss Magic Mars judging was rigged. She’d been juiced for most of her sports wins. Those vacations had all been miserable.
How could anyone enjoy life when it was hedged in by towering walls of muscle keeping her from harm? How could she enjoy any sense of accomplishment when failure was held at blasterpoint to stay away from her?
Fuck Nissa.
She was barely enough not a nobody to go all the best places, yet worthless enough to be allowed to have fun. The only times she got a protective detail were when she traveled with the real family. She was just some cousin of Jimmy’s on his mom’s side. She didn’t have to carry around the Rucker name like her and Janice.
Unless she hid it better, Janice didn’t mind. She laughed off the protections, flirted with her bodyguards, and snuck off on them to screw around. And no one gave her shit about any of it because Granddad didn’t pay that close attention.
Well, fuck Janice too, then.
Tania changed out of her dress. What appeared and functioned similarly to a corset was in fact an ablative armor vest rated to stop a blaster rifle. Hot, stiff, and sweaty, the idea that someone might actually shoot her made her feel like the tiniest sliver of a badass. She wasn’t allowed out in public without it, though, and that stipulation earned it her ire.
Across the room it flew.
Nissa talked about marrying that recruit of Earl’s and starting a family. Maybe that was one way to climb up the ranks, just like Uncle Bart had so long ago via Mom. Marrying talent was riskier than marrying a name, but it didn’t matter.
No guys talked about Tania like that. None of them dared think of marriage and kids. Not that she wanted either. She only had two types of dates: the ones who knew who she was and wanted a leg up in life, and the ones who didn’t and got scared shitless the second they learned.
The idea of just lassoing one of the dumb ones long enough to get knocked up had certainly crossed her mind. And maybe it came up in an argument once with Dad. Ever since, her hormone regulator had been on lockout. She wasn’t getting pregnant until her father allowed it or she turned eighteen and could have the regulator surgically removed.
A sophisticated alarm system guarded every window in the room, keeping her in as much as intruders out.
She hopped into a shower tiled in Italian marble.
Her shampoo cost a hundred terras a bottle.
The bathrobe she threw on was Chiffani.
She took off over a hundred thousand terras worth of jewelry from her ears and nose.
Her nightgown was from Fulran of Ebek’s “For Humans” collection.
Tania threw back silk sheets imported from Keru and softer than anything Earth had ever made.
She climbed into bed and cried herself to sleep.
Becky sipped a Ganymede brew, savoring the aroma as the coffee was still too hot to just drink. A whipping morning wind across her balcony would speed the process, but she hadn’t come out here for that. Sunrise on Mars had become her favorite time of day. Michelle and Rhiannon would be getting up any time now. Aerial traffic was still light—by Martian standards, at least.
No hangover.
No lingering high.
A good night’s sleep.
She had all day while the kiddos were off at school and no plans at all. Brad had dropped off another ten thousand terras in hardcoin last night to cover the family’s expenses while Chuck was away. Damn kid was going to get himself killed playing gangster, but worrying wasn’t going to stop him. Chuck did every bit as much stupid shit and had lived this long, and he’d never provided like the boy.
Brad’s only condition for support was that she stay clean enough to pass a sobriety checkpoint—not that she planned on piloting anything. Her pilot’s license was more of an honorary thing, like a high school diploma. Just coming out of New Cali with one had been enough for her; traffic on core worlds still terrified her.
She took another experimental sip, and her coffee was safe to drink.
Just cool enough to tolerate, she relished the heat all the way down her throat and into her stomach.
Seven and nine. Damn, Becky was getting old. But motherhood had never been so easy. Maybe there was something to the older ones, after all. Rhiannon had friends and playdates and shit. Michelle had after-school classes she insisted on like some kind of nerd. That stuff occupied evenings and weekends. But during the days, it was time off.
School. Who’d have thought…
Chuck was so against them, and she’d mostly hated them herself, that she’d underestimated what a calm, core-world environment could do for a mother. The few times they’d landed on a world that made the kids attend, she’d always used the time to get high or fool around.
Brad had a scanner’s sense about her recreational usage that she couldn’t fake it. So sneaking a few hits past him sounded like a bad plan. As for fooling around, Becky didn’t know where to begin. Widowers and divorcés among the other parents at school seemed the obvious avenue but fraught with drama. She couldn’t look at a sunrise like this while planning to dive headfirst into a drama fest.
Mars probably had plenty of scenes. But them kiddos were reminding her of some age building up on her like crud around the kitchen sink. She could pay to have someone scrape it off, but that wouldn’t make the sink any newer. Most scenes probably weren’t looking for any quadragenarian newcomers.
Chuck hadn’t even been there for her birthday. He didn’t even know she was only approaching forty, not past it. Or maybe he figured it out at some point and never let on. Either way, Rhiannon turning seven was just another reminder that Father Time was coming for her with new digits. And, somewhere out there, Jamie was twenty-three or so.
Just shy of twenty-three?
Or was she nearly twenty-four, then? Hell, maybe twenty-five.
Damn, Becky couldn’t even remember today’s date, let alone birth years.
Well, she was going to celebrate, even if it was alone. And if she couldn’t have Chuck around for it, she’d find something Chuck-shaped where it mattered.
The balcony slider opened. “Mom?”
“Oh, hi, baby,” Becky greeted a sleepy-eyed Michelle.
“How you want your eggs?”
“Scrambled is fine, baby. Nothing fancy.”
Michelle nodded and retreated back inside.
Solo time was going on pause. She’d have the rest of the day. Time now to get the not-so-littles-anymore ready and off to school.
Becky downed her remaining coffee and headed in for a refill.
At long last, she’d finally solved motherhood. All it took was letting them age out of needing her for every damn thing, a steady gush of terras she didn’t ask for receipts with, and not having to babysit a bunch of adult criminals on the side.
For half of all Lunites, the closest celestial body in the heavens was the only one they were never allowed to see. At least, not from home. A 10T tram ride to the light side, and spectacular vistas spread over the night sky. Strict light regulations over there kept the ambient illumination to a minimum. Residents often wore datagoggles just for the gamma correction, ruining the view they were paying for.
Nate Kingsley had never seen the point. Over here, on the poverty side of the moon, every place was bright and cheery. Light was cheap.
He blew a whistle and aimed a finger at Devon Connor. “No elbows. I saw that.” One of the other kids passed him the ball. Nate dribbled twice and bounced it to Gina Flores at the free throw line. Kids lined up on both sides of the lane, huffing and puffing for breath.
This was the life for him. Simple. Rewarding. He was helping kids before they turned into clients of some public defender. These Luna kids didn’t get enough chances to play in a full-gravity area. Korolev High School didn’t have stabilized gravity. Students literally bounced around inside the place. Weighted boots were mandatory, but most couldn’t afford to keep up with their body’s strength.
The game continued on. Nate and Ms. Kundu kept it mostly clean. These kids were all novices at the game, so the score remained low, and rebounds abounded. Turnovers outnumbered points. Fouls were more carelessness than either malice or aggression.
His life had started over here on Luna, where it had all begun.
Not every guy got a second chance, but Nate Kingsley knew one when he saw it. Maybe he’d been overworked. Maybe they’d used some sort of mind drug of magic on him. But seeing that he’d sold his soul, even if it was just a metaphor, had made him stop and reevaluate every aspect of his life.
What was he even doing on Barnard’s Star? Far too few of his clients, even the innocent ones, ever got acquitted. Guys like Gary didn’t go free thanks to him, and that had been the whole point from the start. That no one should have to go into that system, get chewed up and swallowed by the evil and told they had it coming. One drunken non-alibi and Gary had been, indirectly, sentenced to death for knowing an assault victim.
Nate hadn’t been able to do a thing about it as a lawyer.
Maybe as a gym teacher, coach, and volunteer he could make a difference by heading off actual crimes. By keeping kids out of the system. Fewer criminals also meant fewer crimes dragging in innocent suspects. Plus, for the first time in decades, Nate felt his health improving. This wasn’t just a semi-annual cholesterol and plaque cleansing. He felt good. Inside and out.
Maybe he’d escaped a deal with the actual devil. Maybe he hadn’t. But he’d escaped a life that was going to kill him with nothing to show for it.
Nate blew his whistle. Time had expired on the final quarter. “Good game, everyone. Hit the showers.”
As he stepped off the court and exited the bench area just beyond, the gravity returned to Luna’s famous one sixth of Earth Standard. The spring returned to his step, and he felt…
Free.
Medusa’s Typhoon shook as she flew through the wreck of an eyndar starfighter that had exploded too close to her nose for comfort. Shield indicators went dark. At first, Medusa suspected an electronics failure on her dashboard. But the remainder of her HUD was active. The crack in her canopy attested: she had no forward shields.
“You OK there?” Aztec demanded. Checking scanners, she was in formation on Medusa’s two o’clock, just behind her.
She fumbled with switches and knobs. “Forward shields are down. Can’t get a reroute. Think I lost an emitter.”
“Swap. I’ll take point.”
Tactically, it was sound. Aztec had her shields mostly intact. The move felt cowardly, but it was the smart play.
Before she could decide, the squadron comm squawked. “Spider Squadron, we’ve got orders to bug out. Return to hangar on the double.”
Medusa didn’t need to be told twice. Four kills were enough for one sortie. She wouldn’t die a hero today.
“Raincheck on the human shield,” Medusa commed just to her wingman. The pair opened thrusters and put the cloud of eyndar bogeys behind them. The remains of Squadron 89 joined them in full retreat. Pack hunters by instinct and training, the eyndar pursued.
Rather than waste speed on evasive maneuvers, Medusa opted for pure thrust. The Typhoons could outrun eyndar starfighters, and the ENV Leonidas was under full burn as well, counting on a similar advantage over the pair of eyndar destroyers chasing them.
Earth Navy had an institutional beef with running away from a battle. That was their problem. Medusa was plenty happy to be under the command of Captain Marvin Streeter, who understood that some battles weren’t meant to be won, just survived. A sinking feeling in Medusa’s gut told her that many more retreats like this, and Earth Navy would find someone willing to stand and fight. Ideally, Earth Navy wanted the battle won; frankly, they didn’t seem keen on Streeter’s lack of trying.
That wasn’t Medusa’s personal opinion. That was Streeter’s XO talking out of school, pillow-to-pillow. Thanks to Commander Del Rosario, she knew how badly the war was going for Earth Navy here in Tau Sector and how much flak Cpt. Streeter took for his role in that weakness. One cruiser wasn’t going to swing a war, but the Admiralty wanted to see a little more pushback at least.
She and Aztec got clipped a couple times each, but their rear shields held. Spider 7 and Spider 15 weren’t so fortunate.
Emergency hangar landing protocol kept them grounded once inside. As Typhoon after Typhoon caught up with the Leonidas, Medusa took a moment to inspect the damage to her own. The crack in her glassteel canopy was a sign of thermal shock. It could have blown out without another hit. Diagnostics confirmed she had no forward shield emitter, and the lateral emitters were offline. Any shot but from straight behind her was liable to have been a kill.
A vicarious thrum of main thrusters passed from the Leonidas to the hangar and into the cockpits of the starfighter pilots. Once the last of the squadrons were aboard, the hangar’s blast doors came down.
The thrusters went silent. Medusa realized she’d been feeling the reversers, if they were coming to a halt.
Astral dropping in combat was always harrowing.
With the blast doors down, the pilots scrambled free of their starfighters. Mechanics worked furiously to secure each Typhoon to the deckplates before commencing emergency repairs.
“Canopy. Forward and lateral emitters,” Lt. Jamie “Medusa” Ramsey reported to her ground crew. They tapped her report onto datapads without greeting or acknowledgment.
Dodging people with actual work to do, Jamie made her way to the pilots’ barracks. Hunkering down with her squadronmates, she shared a top bunk with Aztec, side by side, feet dangling. Just noting how many they were missing worried everyone.
The Leonidas jolted.
“All hands, prepare for astral.”
Jamie leaned forward and gripped the side of the bed. Aztec held onto her.
Punishing fire rattled the vessel. Outside in the corridors, klaxons blared. Aztec tensed around her.
This was the shitty part. Not the fighting out in the Black Ocean, but the taking fire while trapped aboard a capital ship. Being a sitting duck, fate held by other people. No visibility. All status updates by inference and guesswork.
A hellacious blast threw Jamie from the bunk with Aztec still wrapped around her.
They didn’t fall.
All the pilots merely drifted.
“Fuck.”
No gravity meant the gravity stone was damaged or destroyed. And no gravity stone meant no protection from inertia. Any big hit could kill everyone inside just throwing them around like dolls. That would leave a mostly intact Earth Navy cruiser with no one alive inside to repel a boarding force. A captain would be a fool not to scuttle his own vessel rather than let that happen.
Jamie squeezed shut her eyes and waited for the end.
Aztec was close enough that Jamie overheard her prayers.
Then, the bottom fell out of the galaxy.
The Leonidas dropped into astral.
If the star-drive was intact, they should have been able to get far enough down that the eyndar couldn’t chase.
No further impacts shook them.
“Are we…?” Spider 10 asked.
“I think so,” Jamie answered.
“All hands, report for repair details. If you’re not in Med Bay, you’re on a crew. Find your CO for your assignment. Obey all warnings for sections open to vacuum. Do not approach radiation areas without clearance. That is all.”
Well, they hadn’t won that battle. But if Cpt. Streeter needed anyone to give him a reference for his next job, Jamie was willing to step up and say anything for that guy.
Brad had drawn an evening shift for sentry patrol at Don Rucker’s house. It was an easier gig than Theo’s place, that was for sure. Smaller grounds, better sight lines, fewer random architectural quirks that provided cover and hiding places for anyone looking to sneak up. There were also, and this was a purely Brad-centric take on the layout, fewer places to sit. Other than designated patios, nowhere in Don Rucker’s back garden were there just random stone benches strewn around to tempt a footsore guard to take five.
