Nikki watches Julio arrive, tracing his progress from the outer perimeter and through the labyrinth of corridors that comprises Habitek HQ. It took her only twenty minutes to get here from NutriGen, but she knew it would take Julio at least twice that, giving her time to scope the terrain.
Habitek designs and manufactures environment modules for spacecraft and for use on prospective exo-planets. There’s seldom such a thing as a vacant lot on Seedee, but she knows Habitek’s staff have all decanted to the Axle and the dry dock, where they have spent the last couple of months fitting out their environmental systems aboard Test Vehicle 14.27.
Julio is headed for the octagonal central chamber, where Nikki is waiting for him, though he doesn’t know who he is coming here to meet. The octagon is where Habitek assemble and demonstrate their test modules, but it is currently empty, the central area of the floor as clean as any surface on Seedee. This is because this section is in fact an elevator platform that descends all the way to the outer rim, allowing the modules to be tested in space conditions. It also allows them to be picked up by shuttles for transportation.
The interior is a maze, which means there are multiple exits should Julio try to pull anything, with the caveat that Nikki does not have a simple or direct escape route. What she does have is the Seguridad emergency-access code to Habitek’s internal monitoring network, which means she can stream all of the camera feeds direct to her lens. She is toggling through them to track Julio’s progress and to ensure that he has come alone as ordered.
So far she hasn’t seen any of his crew within the perimeter. She doesn’t doubt they’ll be close by, but the important thing is that they won’t be getting within fifty metres of the central chamber without Nikki knowing about it.
She watches Julio stride through the corridors with that light and lazy gait of his, the slightest limp on his left-hand side if you know to look for it. He’s looking good, but then he always does. He’s in his late thirties but still boyishly attractive, and his dress sense is to be envied. Nobody has much of a wardrobe up here, but whatever Julio does wear looks stylish by virtue of simply being on him.
Nikki isn’t too proud to admit to herself that she’d like a tumble with the guy, if he wasn’t such an asshole.
Everyone assumes he was some kind of gangster back on Earth, a rumour he has diligently cultivated in order to bolster his reputation. The Quadriga has a controversial open-door policy on hiring ex-cons: a criminal record does not disqualify you from working here, as long as you are given a clean bill of mental health by their psychologists. It is part of the philosophy of the entire project—the idea that we should all believe in the possibility of a new beginning. Consequently, there are a lot of people here quietly serving out a personal penance. The Quadriga always knew that Seedee would benefit from individuals like that: folks who understand they’ll never be family men and women, and whose lives are only given purpose by a commitment to their work.
That isn’t Julio’s story, though. Nikki knows otherwise.
He grew up in a rough neighbourhood, with no father, a drunk mother and two older brothers who were running rackets in their early teens when they weren’t serving juvenile detention. Julio had a route out of there, though. He was this genius soccer player. The gods reached down and touched his left foot. He got signed up by one of the big clubs in Spain and was tipped for a career that would take him to a different world from his fuck-up family. Problem was he never escaped their orbit and they dragged him back down.
Julio got his left knee shattered. Not on the field: two psychos with baseball bats took him to a lock-up and went to work on his leg. It was nothing to do with him: just a means of getting at one of his brothers, who had crossed the wrong guy.
Took him six months to walk again, and as for soccer, forget it.
He trained as a chef, made a new start, but he was still living in a world where soccer was everywhere and he couldn’t deal with the constant reminders of what he had lost. Word is he just couldn’t forgive his brothers either: never spoke to them again. Eventually he applied to come work in Seedee, start over in a place with few reminders of his past.
A lot of people got a plan like that, but it only works if you can wipe the slate clean inside your own head. Julio showed up on Seedee with a sackful of bitterness and rage. He was short-tempered, violent and resentful: always angry about not getting his due, and no matter how much he did get, it was never enough. Then ironically, for a guy so determined to escape his fuck-up brothers, he found that his real mojo lay in the family business.
Nikki is standing on the opposite side of the octagon, about fifteen metres from where Julio enters. It’s as close as she intends to let him get.
He gives an odd little laugh as he realises who he is looking at, like he’s surprised and yet shouldn’t have been.
“Nikki fucking Fixx.”
“I need you to know that I didn’t kill Omega,” she says.
She doesn’t have to tell him to keep his distance. He leans against the doorway, folding his arms, reflecting upon what she has said and most probably the very fact of her presence.
“Your buddies in Seguridad sure seem to think you did. That’s why your face is on every lens and you’re hiding out in here, instead of strutting around being cock of the walk up on Mullane like you love to do.”
Interesting, she thinks. That isn’t why she’s on the lam, so either he doesn’t know the real reason or else he is pretending not to know. She’s betting on the former. Julio’s not sharp enough for that kind of compartmentalisation. On the spur of the moment, he wouldn’t be able to calculate what information he can and can’t reveal.
“What they think doesn’t matter. The truth is it wasn’t me.”
“You drew me out here just to tell me that? Like I care which one of Yoram’s people did it. If you’re hoping to spare yourself from the coming storm, I hope you got something more to offer me than pleading that you didn’t butcher my friend.”
“The reason I brought you here is to tell you that I don’t think Yoram did it either. Come on, Julio. God knows there’s no love lost between us all, but nobody on Seedee ever resorted to murder over illicit liquor. Why would Yoram cross that line, never mind so spectacularly, knowing it would have the authorities back on Earth demanding a crackdown up here? Who does that help?”
“Maybe he had nothing left to lose. He’s an old man, getting desperate. He knows we’re taking over all his business, so maybe he figures if he can’t run it, nobody’s running it.”
He sounds confident, like he actually believes this.
“I don’t know what you’ve got up your sleeve, Julio, but I think you’ve got a tiger by the tail. I mean, don’t you have any questions, any suspicions over who these guys were at Dock Twelve?”
She gets it wrong deliberately. She wants to see if he corrects her.
He doesn’t. His expression is blank; but vacant blank rather than poker blank.
“Do you even know what I’m talking about?”
He smiles.
“I know far more than you, that’s for sure. And that can’t be comfortable for you, Nikki, huh? Being so out of the loop that you’re reduced to hassling Sol while the guy is trying to enjoy a quiet workout?”
At the mention of Sol, Nikki toggles through the cameras on her lens. There is still no sign of movement on the outer perimeter, nobody approaching the premises.
“Oh, sure, you’re the man in the loop. Tell me again: why are the Seguridad chasing me, Julio?”
She takes in the discomfort in his expression, adequate confirmation that he doesn’t understand the relevance of the question.
“I’m trying to warn you there’s a bigger game being played here, way above your head and mine. Somebody is trying to make out there’s a turf war going on, and they’re using it as cover for something else.”
“There is a turf war going on,” he replies. “You’re just pissed that you’re losing it.” Julio lets out a chuckle. “Yeah, used to be so sweet for you, the glory days when you ran me and my boys out of Mullane. Acting like the sheriff when you were the biggest outlaw on the wheel. Thinking yourself some kind of patron saint to all those hookers because they’re paying you for protection instead of working for someone like me or Sergei Rascasse.”
He’s babbling away, savouring his moment with that smug look on his cute-but-stupid face. Then she realises she’s the stupid one. He isn’t savouring the moment: he’s playing for time.
She checks the cameras again and watches three of Julio’s men drop down through the ceiling in different corridors. They’re right outside the octagon, approaching from all sides, and those are just the ones she can see.
They knew there were cameras inside and scanning the perimeter. They must have ziplined across from an adjacent building.
Nikki looks back at Julio, who is moving towards her as Dade and two others she doesn’t recognise enter the octagon. She doesn’t see Freitas, but he’s bound to be on his way too.
She’s carrying an electro-pulse and a resin gun. At this distance she could neutralise one of them with the jizz cannon, get off two shots if she is lucky. The zapper is a direct-contact weapon, good for one-on-one. There is no way of running these numbers that shows her winning this fight, and everybody in the room knows it.
“See, I sussed that message had to be from you, ’cause I knew you’d been sniffing around NutriGen,” Julio says. “Take it as a double-edged compliment. I figured, who else would be smart enough to work out my deal with the tequila? And who else would be dumb enough to back herself into this rat trap?”
“I’m not the one being dumb here. Believe me, you don’t want to do this.”
“Believe me, we really do. Reckon we’ll score ourselves some points with Boutsikari and the FNG by being such good citizens. Maybe even get us a reward.”
They’re all around her now, only a few metres away.
“Julio, I’m trying to warn you. I’m not the one walking into a trap.”
It’s as she says this that the lights go out.