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“Any reason you chose to use the funny hand on that scanner, Manny?” Secure in their quarters and after a thorough check for hidden listening devices, Roland felt safe asking the question.
Manny tilted his head and smiled. “Scanners know lots of interesting things. Sometimes old lefty here—” he wiggled his white prosthetic fingers “—learns some of these things when it gets too close.” He held up his right hand as if making a vow. “Entirely accidental, I promise.”
Roland grunted. “And did you accidentally find anything interesting?”
“I’ll need to upload the, ah... potential accidental data to my DataPad. Give me a few minutes and I’ll tell you.”
Lucia frowned at him. “Why do you think slicing the door scanner was worth the effort?”
Manny sat at a plain white table in the center of the main area and pulled out his DataPad. “Paranoia? Experience? One or the other, probably both.” He began to swipe at the screen. “I mean, we are fleeing the second largest corporate entity in the galaxy, right? Roland is carrying evidence capable of incriminating them in at least one interplanetary crime, possibly more. We also know that they have access to industry-breaking technology that hinges on them not having their charter dissolved and their board imprisoned.” He looked up from his swiping. “Call me crazy, but I’m not leaving anything to chance. How much does Pike pay his garrison troops?”
Lucia nodded sagely. “Less than what OmniCorp could pay them for turning on us.”
Manny winked. “Far be it from me to cast aspersions on the loyalty of a band of mercenaries...”
Roland hissed. “Pike would murder anyone who did something like that.”
Mindy could not restrain a derisive snort. “Please, Ironsides. Chris Pike gets a lot less scary once the zeroes start piling up at the end of a bribe number. OmniCorp can do zeroes all day long.”
Roland sighed. “Fine. Everyone is a potential piece of shit, then. What are we doing about that?”
Manny replied without looking up. “Well, it seems I may have accidentally broken that door scanner. My left arm is the only way to alter the codelock now, and it appears that I might have deleted everyone else’s access by mistake. Oops.”
“So clumsy,” Mindy said with mock disapproval.
“Also. It looks like I inadvertently scooped up the garrison roster for this section and the duty rotation. Not sure how much help that is, but I suppose if someone who could read 3600 words per minute and process several dozen cognitive strings simultaneously got a hold of those files, said person might be able to identify potential problem children rather quickly.”
Lucia blew the magenta stripe of hair off her forehead and extended a hand. “I guess I know what I’m doing for the next few hours. Give me that thing, Manny.”
Manny handed his DataPad to her. “Have fun, boss.”
“How did you get all this grunt work done before you had me to bother?”
“I’d start weeks in advance.” He dipped his head with a cocky grin. “So glad you’re here, boss.”
“You’re welcome.”
Lucia’s dry tone did not go unnoticed. Her father chuckled at her obvious consternation and gestured to the box still under Roland’s arm. “Give me that thing, Roland. I suppose I should use the time as best I can. Dr. Freeman, I could use your assistance if you are up for it.”
“What?” The scientist started as if just waking up. “Oh. Yes. Of course.”
Roland’s growing frustration with Freeman’s mental state boiled over, and he growled at Freeman. “For fuck’s sake, man. Get your head out of your ass and into the goddamn game! I’m sick and tired of this stupid wide-eyed terror gimmick. Welcome to the universe. Surprise! It’s full of assholes. So was Prospectus. Get over it.”
“Roland,” Lucia’s tone held a warning.
“Sorry, Lucy, but I’m about done with this. We are deep into some serious shit, and every time we need something from this flopping invertebrate, he’s wringing his hands like a jilted teenager and mumbling, ‘Woe is me.’ Fuck! We do not have the luxury of waiting for you to grow up, Freeman.”
Freeman shrank before the giant cyborg’s ire, wilting like warm lettuce. “What... what am I supposed to do? I’m not equipped for this...” his hands flapped, “...whatever this is!”
Roland’s glower fell upon Freeman like a merciless shadow. “Get. Equipped.”
Freeman tried to meet the glare. He failed. “I’m trying, all right?”
“Try?” Roland laughed. “Hah! Try all you want, Freeman. But keep this in mind while shit falls apart around you. It does not matter how hard you try. When they find the pieces of your dead body in a recycler, no one is going to say, ‘Gee, that guy really tried!’ Stop fucking trying, dumbass. Do.”
The room had gone dangerously quiet. Roland’s sudden vehemence thickened the air with enough tension to choke upon. Freeman trembled before his scorn, at last acknowledging his dressing-down with a nod. “O-Of course you are right,” he said. “I am going to die if I don’t figure out how to operate in this new...” his face twisted while he searched for the right word, “...paradigm? Sure. Paradigm. I don’t want to die, Roland. I don’t want Halstead to get away with what he has done, either. I’m sorry, and I will do better.”
“Good,” Roland said, and held the case out to the shivering scientist. “You and Don have a few days at most to extract every little thing hiding inside this memory core. I assume that’s manageable, considering how you helped build it.”
“I’ll—”
“If you fucking say ‘try,’ I’ll kill you where you stand.”
Freeman took the case without meeting Roland’s eyes. “I’ll get it done.”
“Now you get it.” Roland seemed satisfied with that. He left Freeman to shuffle over to Don Ribiero with the case, then turned to find himself the target of several pointed stares from the others. “What?”
“A word, please,” Lucia said in her most businesslike voice. Her arm indicated a private sleeping chamber attached to the main area.
“Sure.” Roland understood he was about to receive yet another of Lucia’s famous lessons on demeanor. Normally, he went to great lengths to avoid Lucia’s disapproval. She tried to make him understand their role as a business entity, and that his occasional bouts of brusque ill temper almost never improved a situation. When the door slid shut behind them, leaving the pair alone in the bedroom, Roland braced for Lucia’s ire with a set jaw. Mentally, he prepared his defenses.
“You want to talk about it?”
Roland’s defenses melted. “Huh?”
“Do you want to talk about why you chose to break Dr. Freeman’s spirit even more than it was to begin with?” She held up a hand to forestall his reply. “Don’t get me wrong, I think you were justified. It just felt a little... excessive, I guess. What’s wrong?”
Roland found himself unprepared for a surprise discussion of his emotional state. He turned away from her to buy time. “Without his help, Don will need months to sort out what’s in that black box. With Freeman’s head screwed on straight it’ll go a lot faster. We need that data, Lucy. We need it fast. There’s no more time in the budget for Freeman to spend letting his philosophy get fucked by his reality. He can get all the therapy he wants when this is over. Until then he needs to pull some goddamn weight.”
Lucia placed a hand on his back and turned him to face her. “You don’t think he’s going to make it, do you?”
Roland knew better than to lie. “I don’t think we can protect him, Lucy. They’re going to throw everything they’ve got at us. He’s too soft. Too helpless. I’ll do my best, but...” His shoulders rose and fell in a huge expressive shrug. “We need him to do as much as possible for us while he’s still around. He needs to be more afraid of not helping than he is of helping. So I scared him.”
Lucia continued to study his face. Meeting her gaze was like trying to stare into the sun, but he did it anyway. After a few seconds, she nodded. “It hurts, doesn’t it?”
“What?”
“Knowing that people are going to die no matter what you do? You’re supposed to be the knight in shining armor. The cyborg super-man. The technological marvel that can do things no one else can. But even you still can’t save them all.”
“Or defeat all the enemies. No. I don’t like knowing it, and I don’t like making decisions that revolve around all the deaths I know I can’t prevent. This thing is going to get hot fast.” He began to speak faster, dire predictions tumbling from his lips as fast as he could imagine them. “What if they send someone like Mindy? What if they send ten Mindys? We’re good, Lucy, but protecting someone like Freeman on an operation is like trying to keep mice out of a storage shed.” The big bald head shook. “If they really want in? They’re getting in. If it was one of us, I’d feel better about it. We all have things we can do that even the odds. You’re a hyperkinetic genius with a bulletproof boyfriend. Mindy would probably find getting hunted by assassins amusing. Manny has already proved that if he decides to hide, nobody is ever going to find him. Freeman? Freeman has no relevant skills. He thinks the concept of money is barbaric and that strong language is a kind of violence. Who needs assassins? Leave him unsupervised at a spacer bar for two hours and the locals will do the job for free! Shit. If OmniCorp pulls out all the stops like I think they will, Freeman is almost certainly going to crack under pressure and get killed at some point. If that happens before we get what we need from the core, it slows us down.”
“And?”
Roland uttered an effusive yet silent curse at her flawless intuition. “Or maybe—just fucking maybe—I can scare him enough to get his head out of his ass and he’ll survive. Who knows? Miracles can happen.”
“That’s the Corporal Tankowicz we know and love.”
“So you’re not mad at me?”
“No. I was just worried about you.”
“That’s cute. The tiny fleshbag is worried about the... what did you call me? Cyborg super-man?”
She gave his arm a playful swat. “Watch who you’re calling fleshbag, mister!”
“It’s a term of endearment.”
“It’s a ticket to sleeping on the couch is what it is!”
Roland shook his head. “I weigh half a ton, you know.”
“So?”
“And where does a thousand-pound gorilla sleep?”
Lucia’s brow furrowed. “What? I don’t know, the zoo?”
“Anywhere he wants,” Roland said with what he was reasonably sure was a smile.
Lucia’s pained facial expression indicated that his smiles still needed a lot of work. “How long did it take you to come up with that one?”
“It’s a very old joke.”
“I thought jokes were supposed to be funny.”
“I thought it was funny.”
“You think Marty’s jokes are funny too. I think they removed your sense of humor to make room for more muscles.”
Roland shrugged. “You might be right.”
Lucia ran her hands through her short hair and exhaled a noisy breath. “Ugh! Okay. Let’s get back out there and try to set ourselves up for success. If we are smart and cautious, it might be possible to keep Freeman alive and get what we need from that core sooner rather than later. We have a defensible position here, and thanks to Manny we are even more buttoned up than Pike’s people realize. That works in our favor. The question is, do we stay here to work or make a run for Dockside?”
“Dockside,” Roland said without hesitation.
“I agree. We control the turf there, we know all the players, and we have allies. We are just as likely to get sold out by an informant there as we are here, but I’ll take homefield advantage any day. As soon as Exit Wound is ready, we’ll jump back to Earth. We are likely to get hit as soon as we land, so we need to be ready for that. I’ll call the guilds and make arrangements.”
“You sure that’s a good idea? If you let them know we are coming, the junkies and snitches will start selling the info to whoever wants it. Might be better to sneak in unannounced.”
“I thought of that, but there is no chance that OmniCorp does not know where we are and where we are going. They’ve had enough time to relay instructions ahead of us. I suspect the ambush is already in place. I think it will be better to have Sam and the Guild heads sweep the streets for new faces before we land.”
Roland could not deny the logic of that. At this point in their relationship, he was accustomed to being out-thought by his partner this way. He assumed Lucia had run several dozen scenarios in her head to get to this plan, and any arguing from him just delayed the inevitable final conclusion. “Makes sense. Between Sam’s cops and the rest of the guilds, it will be damn near impossible to hide a strike force of any size. We’ll hit the ground with a reasonable chance at a clear lane. Where do we hole up?”
“At the office. It’s on The Drag, defensible, and well protected by our local assets.”
“Local assets?”
Lucia’s lips peeled back in a mean and predatory smirk. “Everyone you’ve ever helped or done a favor for is going to repay that debt, big guy. We are calling in all the markers.”
“I don’t think there is as much good will as you think floating around.”
“You’ll be amazed, trust me.”
Roland conceded the point with as much grace as he could muster. “I usually am.”
“Time to inform the troops, then?”
“Your job, boss.” Roland tried to sound flippant. “I’m just here to carry the heavy stuff.”
Lucia stalked back into the rec area with Roland in her wake. Mindy looked up and huffed. “That was the lamest lovers’ quarrel I’ve ever eavesdropped on. You two should be ashamed of yourselves.” The blond head shook in a slow, judgmental arc. “Very disappointed in both of you.”
Manny raised his eyes from the screen of his DataPad. “I told you, Mindy. Those two don’t fight. They discuss things like adults. You should try it.”
“Too boring,” Mindy replied, flopping onto a long couch. “I thrive on drama.”
“Moving on,” Lucia said. “If Mindy has not already briefed you on our conversation, here is the gist. We will be moving on to Dockside as soon as possible. We are going to set up at the office for a long siege. Our plan includes leveraging all our local relationships to ensure plenty of warning when OmniCorp comes looking for us.”
Manny raised his hand. “By ‘local relationships,’ are you referring to the drug dealers, snitches, addicts, thieves, and assorted thugs?”
Lucia’s reply was as dry as a desert wind. “Yes, Manny. Also, the enforcers’ guild, the local Registered Order of Privateers, and the Dockside Police.”
“The super trustworthy and famously ethical Dockside PD!” Mindy added with a theatrical wag of a finger. “We’re saved!”
Lucia rubbed her face with one palm. “You know what? I’m just going to let Roland finish this briefing while I sit in the corner and remember when I worked with adults.”
Roland sniffed. “Shut the fuck up, kids. Sam Parker’s people are plenty trustworthy, and every guild in Dockside owes us. The snitches can snitch all they want. It’s not like we’re hiding. I want every merc, bounty hunter, and assassin working our turf to be on our side by the time we hit the ground, Mindy. That’s on you.”
“Assassins and bounty hunters hate you, Roland.”
“Not my fault. They should know better than to take bounties on me if they want long careers.”
Lucia chose this moment to jump back in. “Dockside is some of the most profitable hunting ground in the system. If the Lodge is unwilling to assist us, they’ll find the cost of doing business in Dockside much steeper when this is over. Play hardball, Mindy.”
“Okay, boss. If you say so.” Mindy did not sound convinced.
Lucia moved to the next topic without acknowledging it. “Manny? You’re going to be actively scouting the whole time. Let my dad and Freeman handle the tech. I need you on the pavement doing what you do best.”
Manny looked nervous. “What about Catrina? She’s going to be in a lot of danger.”
Mindy snickered. “Look who’s worried about his girlfriend now?” She winked at Lucia.
Lucia, again, ignored the assassin. “Catrina is Christopher Pike’s niece and a senior project manager for the wealthiest megacorporation in the galaxy. She will be up to her neck in mercenary bodyguards and high-dollar security tech. She’ll be fine, Manny.”
Manny did not look convinced. “I guess you’re right. I’ll get started on the scouting as soon as we touch down.”
“We will probably get hit early,” Roland said. “They won’t want us to get settled. Buckle up for a rough ride, kids.”
Mindy clapped like an excited child. “This is gonna be fun!”