CHAPTER 20

“Younger brother.” The sound of Ridge’s voice made Kit jump as it came from the concealed speakers behind him. Even disembodied, Kit’s cousin was always sneaking up on him.

“Bossrider wants you. His office. Savvy?”

Kit looked across the wardroom table at Juan and shrugged. Juan gave his playtable polarizer a twist and Kit looked down into the ebon surface: an array of threedee ships filled the blackness, plasm flowing from their engines. Trey through six. “Short squadron,” Juan said.

Kit twisted his polarizer knob and let Juan see his array. Suns glowed in the depths of the table, surrounded by planets that moved in their orbits. “Cluster,” said Kit.

“Shit.”

“You shouldn’t have redoubled, Elder Brother. You knew I bid eighteen last round.”

“Chinga tu madre.”

Kit touched a symbol on the display that added Juan’s losses to his account, then stood and left the shooters’ lounge. The screen automatically snicked closed behind him.

The lock was keyed to his print now. He’d bossed his first shoot on the way to Santos 448. It hadn’t been the best shoot of the trip, but it hadn’t been the worst, either. He was proud of it.

Marco even called Kit by his name now.

Marco’s office door was closed, which was unusual. Usually Marco liked to keep it open so that he could keep an ear on what was happening in the ship.

Kit scratched at the door. “It’s me, bossrider.”

“Come in, shooter man.”

He pushed the screen open and stepped inside. His heart staggered. “Hi,” he said. The greeting was pure reflex.

Beautiful Maria looked up at him. She was sitting on the edge of Marco’s workstation couch, her long legs hanging over the side. Bruises mottled her face. “I’ve run away,” she said.

Kit folded a chair down from the wall and sat in it. Flexing his lipless smile, Marco looked from Kit to Maria and back. “She wants to stay with us,” he said. “What do you think of that?”

“I want to stay with you,” Maria blurted. Her dark eyes stared at Kit, and Kit’s nerves went hot.

There was a silence filled briefly by the hiss of Marco’s espresso bulb. The bossrider sat on the edge of his desk, knobbed feet dangling, wearing only his crucifix and a pair of blue trunks. His gaze settled on Kit.

“What do you think of that, Kit?” he asked.

Kit found his voice. Anger and horror churned in his belly as he looked at Maria’s face. “What happened?” he asked.

“Ubu blames me for. . . the way things have gone. He’s been hitting me. I couldn’t take it any more.”

“So you wanna join Clan de Suarez,” Marco said. “Kindly, lovable Clan de Suarez. Known for our compassion by all humanity.”

Beautiful Maria’s glance flashed to Marco. Kit could see a muscle in her jaw twitching. “I can earn my way,” she said. “I’m a shooter. A great shooter. And I can deal with the aliens, better than anyone, probably. And you’re gonna be expanding anyway, right? Need more shooters if you’re gonna have more ships.”

“Got it all thought out, don’t you, girl?”

“Be so. Haven’t had much else to think about.”

“Guess not.” There was another pause. Marco looked at Kit again. “I haven’t heard from you, shooter man. You want this femme or not?”

Kit’s eyes hadn’t left Maria. His blood surged hot, then cold. He felt a weird sense of unreality, as if this was some improbable fantasy, or a preposterous joke. Life couldn’t really be like this. “Yes,” he said.

Color bloomed high in Maria’s cheeks, shading the space between the bruises. She looked down at her lap. “Thank you,” she said.

A giddy sense of blessedness rose in Kit. He had made a deal with Marco, with his personal demon, sacrificing Maria in return for becoming a shooter, leaving Abrazo behind— and now he was going to have Maria back in his life, just as if he’d never used her, never surrendered her.

“Shooter man says yes,” Marco said. “But bossrider hasn’t said anything.”

Kit looked up at Marco in sudden fury. “I can choose,” he said. “I can choose who—”

Marco looked at him, his mouth twisting. “Shut the fuck up, Kit.”

Kit’s anger froze. His words caught in his throat. “Good,” Marco said. He turned back to Beautiful Maria. “Wanna know what Ubu’s up to, shooter femme,” he said. “Wanna know what’s going on in his head.”

Maria shrugged. “Hard to say.”

“You think he’s gonna stick to our agreement?”

Maria flashed him a look. “Only if you make him.”

Marco leaned back on his desk and took a slow swallow of espresso. “We can hear him on the radio trying to negotiate with Clan Lustre. Trying to work out a fast delivery schedule, independent of ours.”

“Be stupid not to,” Maria said. “Beloved— Clan Lustre can synthesize the drugs faster than any of our ships can possibly deliver them and return. If he piles up a lot of cash right now he can insulate himself against whatever happens next.”

“You think he can shuttle Runaway back and forth without your help?”

Beautiful Maria seemed to think for a moment. Her lips twitched in the beginnings of a smile. “Won’t be easy for him,” she said.

Marco leaned closer to her. “You think he’ll hire help?”

“Could be. He’s got options on two singularities. Gonna have to hire help anyway, when the new ships get built.”

Marco scowled, obviously not liking that idea. He thought for a moment, rubbing his nose with a finger.

“Of course,” Maria said, “he’s just lost half his profits.”

Marco’s eyes widened. “Half?”

“We inherited equally from Pasco. We each own fifty percent of the ship.”

Marco considered this. “Why’s Ubu the bossrider, then?”

“He wanted it. I didn’t. And he’s older, a little.”

“What’s Beloved?” he said. “You started to say something about Beloved.”

Maria gave a surprised smile. “You don’t know?”

“Know what, Pasco’s Maria?”

She blinked. “That’s right. You don’t know anything about them. I forgot all about that.” She took a deep breath. “Beloved’s their... bossrider, I guess. Their governing intelligence. Beloved’s what her servants call her. I don’t know what she calls herself.” Her cut lips twitched in a smile. “Clan Lustre, maybe.”

“Go on, shooter femme.”

“The aliens aren’t like us. They’re really only one person, one thing. One idea. The others are just... like robots, almost. They don’t even have names.” She gave an amazed laugh, shook her hair back. “You don’t even know what they look like, do you? What did you think you were going to find here, when you came?”

“We expected to find people,” Kit said. “A lost habitat, maybe. Or something that had been set up on the sly.”

Marco was looking at him. Suddenly he was aware of how loud his voice had been.

Maria was nodding. “A reasonable idea, I guess. Everyone knows there aren’t any aliens.”

Marco turned his attention to Maria, studied her for a long moment. He leaned close to her.

“You part of some kind of plan, Maria?” Kit was surprised at the soft, friendly tone in his voice. “You here as part of some scheme of Ubu’s?”

Maria seemed nervous at the question. She hesitated for a moment, then stared up at Marco. “Could be, Marco,” she said quietly. “Nothing I’m gonna say will change your mind, if that’s what you think.”

Marco didn’t say anything, just leaned closer and looked at her for a long time. Maria stared back, her expression defiant. Her color rose, then fell away.

Kit realized he’d been holding his breath. He let it out slowly, then breathed in.

Marco nodded. “If Kit wants you, you can stay. The both of you’ll transfer to Familia after this next run.”

“Thank you, bossrider,” Maria said. Politely.

Kit’s mind swam. He’d felt as if he’d been falling down a long, dark, nightmare tunnel, then struck nothing but soft cushions at the bottom.

“There’s a room just upspin of here,” Marco said to Maria. Behind him, the espresso machine gave a long gurgling hiss. “Painted blue. A shrine. Wait there for Kit. I want to talk to him.”

“Yes, bossrider.” Beautiful Maria rose quietly from Marco’s chair and stepped toward the door. Her hand dropped on Kit’s shoulder, gave it an encouraging squeeze. Kit looked up at her and gave her a faint smile. The screen slid shut behind him.

Marco dropped off his desk and sat in his own chair. He slid the chair forward on its tracks, turned it to face Kit.

“Congratulations,” he said. “You’ve come a long way in the last few months.”

“Thank you, bossrider.”

“I wouldn’t start thinking you’re irresistible if I were you,” Marco said. “I think she’s still working for Ubu. I think she’s here to spy on us. So don’t think it was your pretty brown eyes that brought her here.”

Kit stared at him. Marco cackled.

“Don’t be so fucking surprised, shooter man. I bet Maria’s trying the same thing on you that you tried on her. I’m gonna try to negotiate a secret delivery schedule with Clan Lustre, and Ubu’s gonna want to know it.” He gave a grating laugh. “He probably still figures he can take it all away from me. I don’t know how.” He looked at Kit. “Ubu should have demanded half the business, not a sixth, right? The fact he didn’t makes me think he’s planning something.”

“If you think that,” Kit said, his thoughts whirling. “If you think that,” starting again, “why’d you let her on board?”

Marco shrugged. “Maybe I’m wrong. Could be she is here because she’s desperate, or because she’s so charmed by you it hasn’t caught her attention that you fucked her over.” He cackled again. “Of course I figure it’ll never hurt us to have someone on our ship with command of half Runaway’s profits. If she’s really mad at Ubu, we can encourage her to file a lawsuit against him to get control of Runaway. Keep him so busy fighting in court he won’t have time to plot against us.”

He shook his head, then gave Kit a sharp look. “It’s better to have her here where we can watch her. She’s half Ubu’s brainpower. Maybe the better half.”

Kit’s spirits fell. He was beginning to see where Marco was heading. “You want me to spy on her, right? My own femme.”

Marco grinned at him. “You don’t have to. She’s on our ship, for Rice sake. There are nineteen people on board— we’ll know where she is every minute. The thing is just to keep her from spying or doing any sabotage. So, as of this hour, every critical bit of information is going under new passwords. All our shooter files, our operating system, our nav files, our contracts. And Beautiful Maria gets frozen out of all of them. We don’t give her the new passwords, we don’t let her near the comm equipment or key her into the shooter’s lounge or let her boss a shoot on the trip back to Angel. We don’t even let her into the command cage. Nothing.”

“Marco. She’s gonna want something to do.”

“There’s maintenance. Cooking. That sort of thing.”

“Shooters don’t do that.”

“Not on our ship, maybe. But she’s used to it. She must have done all those chores back on Runaway.” Marco gave a dry laugh. “It’ll all give her more time for romance, shooter man. Think about the good side of it.”

Kit just looked at him. “Who’s going to tell her, bossrider?”

Marco eased himself down from his desk, turned to his terminal. His voice was a mumble. He’d already lost interest.

“Nobody else better qualified than her man, shooter.”

*

Anger had hummed in her for days, a constant background whitenoise hiss atop which spun her other thoughts, like skaters on ice. The anger had become a permanent presence, a foundation for reality. Now the hum increased in volume, became an urgent roar in her mind.

“Sorry,” Kit said. He stood in front of her in a stance of helplessness. “It’s what the bossrider wants.”

“Is he gonna have people follow me around?” Beautiful Maria asked. “Lock me in my room third shift?”

Kit tossed up his hands. “I don’t have anything to do with this.” He stepped forward, took her arms. “After this run, we transfer to another ship. Things will be more normal then.”

Maria’s anger growled in her ears. She spun away from Kit, wrenched herself free. “Marco thinks everyone’s like him,” she said.

Kit said nothing. He couldn’t argue that one.

Fury wailed in her bones. She took a long breath.

The shrine’s blue color reminded her of the blue-white light on Beloved’s ship. The room was small, with benches, little colored lanterns, the statue of a pale-skinned woman in a blue gown.

“This is your church, huh?” she said.

“Marco’s, mainly. Most of the rest of us aren’t regular observers.” Kit sounded relieved that the conversation had moved onto neutral territory.

Maria walked down the aisle, looked at the statue more closely. Pointed stars shone on the woman’s gown. “Why do they call them stars,” she said, “when they’ve got all those points on them?”

“I never thought about it.”

“Religious people aren’t very smart.”

“Tell that to Marco.”

Beautiful Maria thought about that. “Yeah,” she said. “Okay. Point taken.”

“Show you our room?”

She turned toward him. “Sure.”

Maria followed him out of the shrine. As she stepped into the corridor a wave of vertigo swept over her, an eddy of pure panic. She was alone here, in a strange place, Marco had isolated her, and Runaway was no longer an option. She’d never been so thoroughly cut off from her home before.

Her heart hammered. A whirlwind shrieked through her mind. Somehow she kept her feet moving as she followed Kit down the corridor. She kept her eyes focused deliberately on his back. She saw that he’d had a haircut recently, that his short nape hair came to a central downward point between the two strong tendons at the back of his neck. Her fear abated. Kit stopped, reached out, opened the door.

Maria’s anger boiled up again. She looked at Kit’s open, smiling face with purest hatred.

“Here we are,” he said.

You bastard, she thought.