Allison Chomko descended the stairs into Inga’s and found the tavern doing a good business. The first rotation of Ashanti’s crew had come down with the latest shuttle. People had volunteered to personally escort the malnourished and frail crewmen, to ensure that they didn’t get into trouble. And, most of all, to be sure that no one got devoured by the local fauna. Donovanians considered it bad luck to be eaten on a person’s first night planetside.
She and Dan had been of two minds about allowing the Ashanti’s crew into either The Jewel or Betty Able’s until it was learned that the Supervisor had provided each spacer a hundred Port Authority SDRs in advance of their Corporate pay back in Solar System.
Granted, it was only thirty crew people, and with only a hundred SDRs to their names it wouldn’t be good business to pick them completely clean the first time they set foot in either establishment. The best that could be hoped for was that they’d think kindly of The Jewel or Betty Abel’s. That they’d come back sometime when they were flush.
Allison picked out Kalico Aguila seated at the bar next to Talina Perez’s chair. Even as she spotted her, a bowl of the house chili was placed in front of the Supervisor. Would have been—in the old days—that Aguila would have had a marine guard to watch her back. That she didn’t showed how far the woman had come since that long-ago day she set foot on Donovan surrounded by twenty marines in battle tech who were toting hot weapons.
Allison nodded to and returned calls from patrons, gave a wave to others.
It no longer bothered her that old friends, people like Mellie Nagargina, Friga Dushku, or Amal Oshanti never so much as met her eyes. Losing their respect had been a price she’d had to pay. Odd notion that. Once she’d been one of them. An aspiring wife and mother, a homemaker for Rick. Only to lose him to an accident and then her infant daughter, Jessie, a year later to a quetzal.
So, where would she be if Dan Wirth hadn’t sniffed her out with the same acuity as a slug in the mud homed in on a bare foot? Remarried? With another two children? Teaching at the local school? A housewife bustling about her garden, preparing suppers, and ensuring the kids were properly dressed and supervised?
It brought a tired smile to her lips as she walked up to the chair beside Aguila’s and slipped onto the cushion.
“Good evening, Supervisor.” To Inga, she gave the hand sign for a glass of whiskey.
“Allison Chomko,” Aguila said in a flat voice. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“At first I thought maybe we’d try girl talk. You know, chat about the weather and gossip about who’s doing what. Then I figured fuck it, we’d talk business.”
“And just what business did you have in mind?”
“How much do you want for Kalen Tompzen?”
Aguila laid her spoon down, fixed those laser-blue eyes on Allison’s as she asked, “You really want to go there?”
“Supervisor, history is what it is. You and Dan had to learn a few things before you could understand what Donovan is all about. There’s enough here for everyone, but it takes all of us together.” She grinned. “You beat Dan at his own game. Got to admire a woman with that kind of acumen.”
“What makes you think I don’t hold a grudge?”
“Fine. That’s your concern. Mine is business. How much do you want for Tompzen?”
“You assume he’s still alive.”
“I figure we’d have heard if he wasn’t. As for myself, I suspect you’ve had him doing whatever unpleasant thing you could possibly find or invent. At this stage, he’s probably so miserable that an up-close-and-personal encounter with a quetzal might come as a welcome relief compared to the crap he’s got to look forward to.”
“What do you want with him?”
“He has skills.”
“On Dan’s orders, he killed three people who worked for me. Threatened my life. I don’t forget.”
“I’m not asking you to. Twenty thousand?”
Aguila chuckled, returned to her chili.
Allison read the wariness in Inga’s eyes as she set the whiskey on the chabacho bar. Allison slid a five-SDR coin across the wood, saying, “Keep the change.”
“Hope this batch is better than that last,” Allison noted, swirling the amber liquid in the glass and inhaling the aroma.
“It is,” Aguila told her.
Allison sipped, swished it around her tongue. “Never had a taste for the stuff until I had to start drinking it as part of the job.” She paused. “You were up at the new ship today. You really putting the transportees out at Tyson Station?”
“Believe me, you wouldn’t want them here.”
“I lived out there for a while when I was a kid. My folks died out there. It’s about as far as you can get from anywhere. And these people are soft meat.”
Aguila finished off the chili, washed it down with a slug of whiskey, and turned to face Allison. The scars on the woman’s face rearranged as she smiled humorlessly. “I got to meet the leader. The guy’s sitting naked in a chair carved out of duraplast with human-bone insets. His skin’s all cut into fancy scars and he’s painted white. He cut his nose off to leave a hole. Says he’s a walking grave because he’s become a repository for all the people he’s eaten. The guy thinks he’s a messiah who will lead the universe as it consumes itself. Now, even if he doesn’t speak for them all, don’t you think we’d better get a handle on who these people are before we let them loose?”
“That bad, huh?”
“Before I came to Donovan, nothing scared me. Then there was Freelander, followed by Vixen, and now Ashanti. Not to mention Donovan itself. Makes you wonder what kind of moron would agree to be locked into a starship, confined in a small space for a minimum of two or three years, popped out of the universe by an energy field, to hopefully pop back in somewhere light-years away. And only then discover they were going to die of starvation or old age in that tiny little tomb?”
“Not all ships end that way.”
“No. But too many of them do.” Aguila shook her head. “There’s something going wrong with the theoretical physics that we don’t understand. What’s really frustrating is that with the time lag, unless Turalon made it back to Solar System, they don’t have a clue back there that there’s a problem.”
“You were high in the ranks. What do you think they’ll do when they find out? Stop sending ships?”
“It’s a possibility. The Corporation was founded on the principle of limiting risk, controlling business cycles, providing social value through efficient distribution of resources. The biggest aspiration was getting rid of uncertainty and the destabilizing effects of nationalistic governments. Extraction, refinement, manufacturing, production, logistics, distribution, and consumption. All perfectly monitored by AI and ever-evolving algorithms.”
“And you think The Corporation will balk over the number of dead aboard Freelander and Ashanti?”
“You think The Corporation gives a shit about people? Human beings are a renewable resource.” Aguila’s expression tightened. “It’s the cost of the ships verses the potential returns. We’d just damn well better hope that Turalon made it back on schedule, and with all of its cargo intact.”
Allison took another taste of her whiskey. “Welcome to Donovan. Which means we’re on our own. And that brings me back to my purpose: Will you take twenty-five thousand for Tompzen?”
“Wirth getting tired of cutting his own throats these days? By the way, in case you haven’t noticed, that’s a real nice playmate that you’re in bed with.”
“Dan is more than capable of keeping the chuckleheads in line and assuring that the marks cover their bets. But that’s not always good business. It behooves us to have another person in the position of enforcer. A layer of insulation between the occasional strong-arm tactic and the loftier position to which Dan has aspired in the community.”
“Doesn’t want to have to build any additional schools to rehabilitate his image, huh?”
“As he says, ‘Once was enough.’”
Aguila chuckled. “Fifty thousand.”
“Supervisor, you’re not thinking this through. A great many of your people from Corporate Mine patronize our establishments. Knowing that we’ve taken one of your ex-marines as an enforcer reminds them that certain standards of behavior are expected. And that Corporate Mine’s interests are aligned with ours when it comes to their welfare.”
Aguila’s gaze had sharpened. “You’re not exactly the woman I thought you’d be.”
“Let’s just say I had a rough patch a couple of years back. Life didn’t deal me the cards I thought it would. When I came out of it, I realized that where I found myself wasn’t where I wanted to be. Or who I wanted to be.”
“And who are you now?”
“The second-richest woman on the planet. One who can sit here as an equal, dealing with the most powerful and richest. For the moment, we’re dickering over the value of a man’s life. And no, I don’t have aspirations when it comes to your mine or authority. I’ll do everything in my power to keep you where you are and successful.”
“Why?”
“Because you and your people are making millions down there. As long as you do, Dan and I get to take our cut, and we get to do it without the headaches of administration.”
Again, Aguila gave her the probing look. “So you’re sitting on all that wealth. What are you going to do with it?”
“Me? I’m young. The day is going to come when The Corporation figures out the problem of the missing ships and the navigational errors inherent in inverting symmetry. When they do, I might send them a couple of shipping containers of the finest gemstones on the planet, buy myself a townhouse in Transluna.” A beat. “Or maybe I’ll buy Montana, or that island they call Fiji.”
“Assuming that in the process, you don’t run afoul of the good Mr. Wirth.”
Allison took another sip of her whiskey. “You’re right. He is a dangerous playmate. There isn’t so much as a whisper of empathy, remorse, or regret in his body. The man’s as forgiving as a sidewinder. So far I’ve been smart enough to avoid any conflicts that would incline him to slitting my throat in the middle of the night.”
“Who said that only the wildlife was deadly around here?”
“Welcome to Donovan,” Allison agreed, clinking her glass against Aguila’s.
“All right, twenty-five thousand. And one other thing: Derek Taglioni? He’s hands off. Get my meaning? I don’t care if he plays the tables, buys a whore every now and then, but that’s it. Just simple business. You and Dan don’t try and play him because of who he is.”
Allison shrugged, wondering just who Derek Taglioni was and why Aguila would be worried. “Done and done.”