Breakfast wasn’t up to Security Officer Talina Perez’s standards. Compared to the tasteless pap they served at the Corporate Mine cafeteria, her usual fare of chamois steak, potatoes, and jalapenos, all seasoned with achiote, was a royal feast. Supervisor Aguila’s miners were fed rehydrated rations. Additionally they got a single, small cup of coffee. Or they would until the last of the supply of freeze-dried packets ran out.
Talina’s gut squirmed uncomfortably. Her quetzal made its presence known. The thing presented itself as a foreign body in her belly, turned out it was just the alien creature’s molecules playing with her brain. Flowing through her blood and tissues. Back in Port Authority, Cheng was still trying to figure out the biochemistry.
She glanced around the cafeteria, took in the distribution of coverall-dressed men and women. These were transportees: contract labor who had spaced from Solar System on Turalon. Most were bound to The Corporation for a five-year contract, some for ten. Three quarters of them had arrived on Donovan to find their job didn’t exist, that the machine, animals, or study they’d hired on to take care of had vanished during the long years before Turalon’s arrival. Never one to waste a human body, The Corporation reserved the right to reassign a person to whichever profession was in need.
Supervisor Aguila had decided they would be miners. And she had the marines to back her decision.
To Talina’s way of thinking, the transportees were still “soft meat.” Skulls—so named for the shaved heads they had sported upon arrival—who hadn’t a clue about how to survive on Donovan.
Rather than accept their fate, each and every one could have opted to ship back on Turalon when she spaced for Solar System. True, they’d have lived the rest of their lives in debt to The Corporation, but the overriding fact was that most had been too afraid to make the trip. Especially after learning how many of the big cargo ships had vanished in transit over the last fifteen years. The list was impressive: Nemesis, Governor Han Xi, Tableau, Phoenix, Ashanti, and Mekong. And before that, four of the smaller survey ships had vanished in the early days of Donovan’s exploration.
Even as they were trying to assimilate that chilling fact, Freelander had popped into orbit. A mere three years out of Solar System, her crew was dead of mass murder, old age, and insanity. Three years. But according to the ship’s clocks, she’d spent one-hundred-and-twenty-nine years in transit through whatever reality, universe, or physics she’d inverted to.
Everyone knew that spooky shit happened when a ship inverted symmetry. Until Freelander, no one had known just how spooky.
All of a sudden, life in a mine on Donovan didn’t look so bad.
Talina had originally come to Donovan under a ten-year contract. That had been eleven years ago. At this stage, she figured she didn’t owe The Corporation a damned thing. She spooned up another heaping of rehydrated ration and wished she’d thought to bring a bottle of Tabasco. It wasn’t the real thing, of course, but in Port Authority they made a palatable substitute from the variety of different pepper plants that thrived in the gardens.
A door in the rear opened, and Supervisor Aguila entered, followed by Lieutenant Spiro. At sight of Spiro, Talina’s gut tightened, and a cool rage built under her collar. She and the lieutenant had way too much bad history for the short time they’d known each other.
The quetzal coiled into an angry ball below Talina’s heart and hissed its rage.
Aguila glanced around, spotted Talina, and started toward her. The woman wore a natty black pantsuit, her thick black hair gleaming in the light. Behind her, Spiro was in shining combat armor, as if about to engage in a firefight.
“Oh, joy,” Talina whispered under her breath and surreptitiously reached down to unsnap the strap on her pistol. Her vision sharpened—colors leaping out vividly and shading into the IR and UV ranges. Her hearing grew more acute, registering every sound, the clinking of utensils, whispers of conversation, the shuffling of feet on the floor.
That was the quetzal’s doing as it played with her senses.
Aguila seated herself unceremoniously across from Talina and straightened her cuffs. The woman fixed steely blue eyes on Talina’s. “Unusual, isn’t it? Flying solo at night?”
“Couldn’t sleep,” Talina told her. “Not only that, but we opened a crate with upgraded night vision screens for the aircars. We’ve been looking for an excuse to try them out. Your deserters gave us the opportunity.”
Talina let her gaze slide sideways to Spiro. “How you doing, Lieutenant? Ducked out of any fights lately?”
“Been saving myself to beat the crap out of smartasses.” Spiro’s blocky face broke into a thin grin. “Know anyone who might fit the bill, smartass?”
Talina picked the spot on the Spiro’s high forehead. Right there at the point of a squat triangle drawn between the woman’s eyes and just above the nose. That’s where she’d put the bullet.
Aguila waved Spiro down. “Enough, Lieutenant. At ease.” To Talina she said, “Thanks for bringing my two misguided wanderers back.”
Talina leaned forward, fully aware that all eyes in the place were on her and Kalico Aguila. “We made a deal. When a person gives their word on Donovan, they mean it. I would have figured that you’d been here long enough that you’d be picking up on that.”
“Any sign of my missing marines?” Spiro asked through gritted teeth.
“Nope.”
“Like so many of my contractees,” Kalico said, “they’re absent without leave. Just so we’re clear about who they belong to.”
“Nothing’s changed,” Talina said coolly. “We haven’t seen so much as a footprint. Haven’t heard a word. And if Garcia, Talbot, and Shintzu were wearing battle tech, someone would have said something.”
Kalico nodded as one of the kitchen staff—a young man wearing an apron—brought her a bowl of the same ration the rest were eating. The Supervisor shook a fork out of the rolled napkin and took a bite.
Swallowing, Kalico gestured with the fork. “Dismaying as it is to both sides, we need each other. We’re on our own, Perez. Your people and mine. Maybe Turalon gets through. Makes it back to Solar System. Captain Abibi and her crew are outstanding. And the math worked to get Turalon here in the first place. Reverse it, and they should pop back into Solar System space where they initially inverted.”
“Didn’t work with Mekong, if you’ll recall. She made it to Donovan, then vanished on the way home.” Talina scraped the bottom of her bowl clean.
They ate this same bland shit at every meal? No wonder they were deserting like flies.
Kalico gestured with her spoon. “I can give you a couple dozen hypotheses to explain why Mekong didn’t get back to the Solar System that have nothing to do with inverting symmetry or probability statistics. Could have been an atmosphere plant malfunction, disease, hydroponic collapse, mutiny, generator malfunction, hull breach, and on, and on.”
Kalico arched a challenging eyebrow. “Space isn’t a safe place to travel. But that’s not the point. Fact is, we need each other.”
“Maybe. I still remember that you wanted to put Shig, Yvette, and me up against a wall and order a firing squad to blow us apart.”
Spiro’s expression turned gleeful at just the mention.
“You shot a Corporate Supervisor in the head. What was I to think?” Kalico waved it away. “I know, I know. Maybe we both made mistakes. Donovan has a way of changing the rules.”
Like killing Cap Taggart?
Someone had murdered Cap as he lay helpless in a hospital bed back in Port Authority. Whoever it had been had turned a drug-dispensing valve wide open and overdosed him dead.
Talina shot another cold glace at Spiro. One of the prime suspects.
To change the subject Talina said, “I left the latest inventory from the Freelander cargo with your office. Pamlico, Chaco, and Toby Montoya are sorting the goods and equipment based on utility. If it’s even got a chance of being operative, it goes in one pile. After that they try and figure out if there’s any of it that’s salvageable. That goes in another pile. And finally, if it’s just junk, that goes in a third.”
Talina paused. “And there’s another thing. Some of the guys, they say the equipment is haunted. Possessed. That it has a sort of eerie feeling, makes their skin crawl. That weird shit happens around the crates, and they get the shivers at odd moments.”
“After one hundred and twenty-nine years of sitting aboard Freelander, what can we expect?” Kalico frowned in irritation as she chewed. “What about the seed packets?”
“Cheng and Iji are working with them.” Tal gave the woman a smile. “Here’s a ray of good news. He figures ninety percent will germinate. Best of the best news yet: The coffee beans sprouted.”
“Perez, that bit of cheery sunlight might have just secured our future.” Kalico laughed softly. “Who’d have thought? Just the promise of coffee makes me feel like I’ve got a blood-rotted chance of pulling this off.”
“How’s your farming and field clearing progressing down at the smelter site?”
Kalico’s gaze hardened. “Your people said the soils were good, but we’re having a hell of time with the jungle. It fricking moves. We’ve cleared close to a hectare out of the forest, but how do we keep the trees out? As soon as you clear a patch of ground, the closest trees start shooting out roots and crawling over to take it back. A four-hundred-foot-tall tree with a bole five meters in diameter . . . and it can move ten meters in a day?”
“We’ve never tried farming in thick forest before.” Talina considered the problem, thinking back to when she and Cap had survived on their own in the forest. But that was much farther north, different species of trees, and even then they’d barely made it.
Cap. She ground her teeth, feeling that spear of grief. The quetzal inside her began to gloat. Piece of dung that it was.
Talina flicked her gaze to Lieutenant Spiro, wondering if she really was the murderer. She’d hated Cap.
For that matter, it could have been Kalico Aguila herself. The Supervisor hadn’t made many bones about her disdain for Cap Taggart.
Spiro—through the entire conversation—hadn’t shifted her black-eyed glare. Hard to think that two people, anywhere, hated each other more than she and Spiro did. As if it wasn’t bad enough that all of Donovan was already out to kill them.
Tal gave the armored bitch her most antagonistic smile.
The woman looked like she wanted to swallow her tongue in response. Talina’s quetzal-enhanced vision could see the heat rising in her cheeks.
Kalico had missed the undercurrents as she said, “As to the farm, I don’t want to plant critical crops there until we know we can keep it from being overrun. If you could see to shipping us lettuce, beans, peppers, and cabbages, we’d appreciate it. Maybe some corn and other high-yield grains, too?”
“Yeah, I’ll have some of the farmers start packaging seedlings.” Talina shoved her bowl to the side and sipped the last of the weak coffee in her cup. “I heard the smelter is coming together.”
“All but the power.” Kalico studied her over the breakfast bowl. “The radioactive cores decayed over the century that they were stored on Freelander. We’re working on it. Call it a week to reradiate using the shuttle’s reactor. After that we should have both heat and power.”
“And the mine?”
“Number One is producing nicely. We’ve built a crude stamp mill to break up the ore. The europium, holmium, and terbium deposits we’re finding are remarkably pure. Gold is wonderful stuff when it runs in threads as wide as we’re getting. Number Two is looking very good, the vein widening the deeper we go. But it’s sulfated. We’ll have to rely on the smelter.
“Getting the ore to the smelter’s a problem, since we can’t cut a road through forest that moves. We’re thinking of an overhead tram to carry the ore down to the smelter.”
Aguila tapped a finger in emphasis. “I’ll have my people get in touch with your Toby Montoya about buckets. Maybe he can make something from the metal in Freelander’s junk pile?”
“And the cable?”
“We’re considering extruded carbon fibers. But we’re still working on that. Have to manufacture them in vacuum.”
“Good thing you’ve got the shuttle, huh?”
“Even better, I have an industrial chemist with a background in fabrication. Cable like that gives me something to trade with you people.”
“It would indeed.” Talina slapped her hand to the table. “Anything else you need from us? Anything I should take back to Shig and Yvette?”
“Just my thanks for bringing Cabrianne and Talovich back.”
“How’s their day going?” Tal stood, happy to depart.
“I shot Cabrianne through the head and had his body tossed over the fence.” Kalico fixed Tal with a cold stare. “Talovich got a promotion.”
“Funny world we live in.”
“Yes it is, isn’t it?” Kalico’s hesitant gesture of the hand betrayed embarrassment. “If you wouldn’t mind, Tal. We charge a half-SDR for breakfast here. I wouldn’t bring it up, but, well, you know how it is with a market economy.”
“Yeah.” Talina tossed out one of Port Authority’s silver one-SDR coins, saying, “Keep the change.”
Then she shot one last derisive glance Spiro’s way and flicked an insolent salute. The lieutenant appeared to be smoldering on the inside like an overstuffed volcano.
With a final nod to Kalico Aguila, Talina turned on her heel and strode toward the door.
She knew that every eye in the place was following her.
The quetzal seemed oddly satisfied.
But then more than anything, it wanted her dead.