Girl From Above #4: Trust (8 page)

The whiskey in her hand was mighty tempting.

“What’s the catch?” I asked, rooting around the nooks for two cups.

“Don’t do that.”

“What?”

“Don’t look at me like you don’t know me,” she murmured.

I don’t.
I stayed quiet, tired of lies. Mine. Hers.

She huffed and entered the galley. “Look at me.”

“Is that an order?” I dumped the cups aside and leaned against the counter, keeping my gaze fixed ahead, well away from her.

“You didn’t follow orders when you were in fleet. I don’t expect you to follow them now.” She set the whiskey beside the cups. A good year. She’d have paid handsomely for it, especially on Mimir. “We’ve got about fifteen hours to kill before we hit the first gate. I don’t know about you, but I’d like to share a few drinks with an old friend.”

Friends? Is that what we were? “If fleet searches us at the gate and finds the booze, they’ll pull us in.”

She leaned her hip against the counter and crossed her arms. “I learned a thing or two while smuggling. I’m sure there are places on the warbird we can stash contraband.”

We
were
smugglers. Now I wasn’t sure what we were. Drinking wouldn’t help with that. After a few glasses and with that look in her eyes, I knew exactly where this would end up. She’d be growling all the Spanish curses while I fucked her senseless against the counter. A stirring started way down low.
Fucking hell, when will this shit end?

“I can’t do this, Fran.”

“Bit late for that.” She popped the stopper off the whiskey and poured two fingers into each glass. “You think the Fenrir Nine will let us walk away if we say no? We’ll be the ones face down in the Mimir sea—”

“That’s not what I meant.” I picked up the glass and poured the contents down the sink. “You. Me. Whatever fucked up thing we’ve got going on, I ain’t doing it no more.”

I looked her in those Spanish eyes and saw her expression tighten as she guarded against the words to come.

“
Starscream’s
gone. That ship was about the only thing keeping us together. We do this mission and then we go our separate ways.”
If we survive.

I waited for her to say something, maybe come back with something Spanish that I’d have to look up later, but she swallowed and reached for her drink. “Fine.”

Fine? After everything we’d been through, all I was getting was a
fine
? There had to be more to it. She didn’t strike me as the type to let go without a fight. I had her pegged as the sort to aim her knee at my twitching junk.

I shrugged. “Good.”

She picked up her drink and wet her lips with golden whiskey, her green, seductive eyes on me the whole time. I let a smile slip through, for old times’ sake. It wasn’t so long ago I’d have craved the taste of whiskey on her lips. She knew it too and believed I couldn’t walk away.

“I’m done.” I nudged passed her and left the galley, heading straight for the bridge.

Whatever we were, or whatever we’d had, it had crashed and burned beneath all the twisted shit long ago. She had it in her to make a decent living doing whatever the hell she wanted. Maybe she wanted to go legit, or maybe she’d go on to be a pirate. Off the
phencyl,
she didn’t need me, and I didn’t need her. I’d been alone before Francisca. I’d be alone after her too. It
was
the right thing to do, but it still fucking hurt, because somehow, somewhere down the line, I’d started caring. Old habits wanted me to turn around, down half that bottle, and fuck until I lost my mind. I could pretend it meant nothing, but after the hangover, I’d hate myself the way I hated that fleet asshole in the mirror.

Francisca Olga could get her kicks elsewhere. I was done being fucked every which way.

On the bridge, I set about familiarizing myself with the raptor’s controls, steering my thoughts a long way from Fran.

Count the stars.
On second thought, maybe while approaching fleet’s checks wasn’t the best time to piss off my fake superior officer who had a track record of screwing me over.
Well shit.
What was done was done.

I pulled the maintenance and flight manual from the cloud, spread the documents open on the holodisplays, and focused everything I had on a crash course in raptor controls. I soon forgot the siren call of Fran and whiskey. Not long after, Fran joined me on the bridge, silently running through multiple checks. She noticed the flight manuals and pitched in with a few little tricks she’d picked up, then helped me get a feel for the warbird’s twitchy controls.

Either she took rejection a lot better than I did, or she had revenge up her sleeve, the type of revenge I wouldn’t see coming.

I sure knew how to pick ‘em.

M
y acquisitioned
Chitec transport pelican drifted into the gate lane behind four other commercial ships. The jumpgate—a vast ring that routinely swallowed ships and spat arrivals back out on the other side—glittered ahead. Fleet’s gull-wing-shaped warbirds flanked either side of the commercial and civilian lines. Their presence alone was enough to deter most people with unsavory motives.

As I was piloting a clearly designated Chitec vessel, I was hoping we’d get clearance without delay. There was no reason for fleet to suspect the vessel had been hijacked.

In the flight chair beside me, James was scanning the maps and images I’d pulled from the cloud using the ship’s direct link. Our next stop blinked on the charts: a decommissioned mining waypoint locked in artificial orbit around Ceres. I only needed the crew to get through the gate. Once on the other side, I’d leave them at the waypoint before moving on to Janus.

“I need direct access to the cloud,” I said.

“I don’t think that’s wise,” James replied, focused entirely on the holoscreen.

Various replies presented themselves, not all of them pleasant. I could easily force him to reinstate my cloud access. A few broken fingers would suffice.

He looked at me and smiled when he found me watching. A little under two seconds later, his smile faded.

“One, I disconnected you from the cloud for your own protection. To keep …” He paused, aware of the crew huddled at the back of the bridge. “To keep you safe from certain individuals.”

“I do not need your protection, Doctor Lloyd.”

He stared back at me with wide, questioning eyes. “Why don’t you call me James any more?” When I didn’t reply, he pressed his lips together, blanching them of color, and swallowed hard. “Right. I er … Look, there’s no way around saying this, but the last time you were connected, you killed people.”

“You breached my protocols and left me open to the remote override. That was your error, not mine.”

“Why do you need access?” he asked, the pitch of his voice more insistent. He waved a hand at the flightdash. “You have the cloud right here.”

“I can navigate the datacloud more efficiently than these rudimentary controls. With access, I can garner information on our target and his resources within seconds. Information that is vital if our mission is to succeed.”

“I don’t know …” He rubbed at the back of his neck.

“You are mistaken. There is no choice here. You will restore my access, either of your own free will or under duress.”

“Torture?” He laughed, but his laughter abruptly cut off at the sight of my expression. “To reinstate your access, I will need my datapad. You’ll have to allow me direct access to your processes. It will take time.”

“How much time?”

“An hour. Less, if your digital pathways are all intact.” He looked away but not before I caught the downturn of his lips. Guilt. Good.

He couldn’t hurt me. I’d allowed him administrative access to all of my systems. I’d trusted him. That would never happen again.

“Chitec Transport Designation Zero-Fifty,”
a curt male voice announced via external comms.
“Gate travel is on high alert. Authentication is required before you proceed
.
”

“After we’re through the gate,” I told Lloyd then turned my attention to the crew. They’d tucked themselves into a tight, protective group, all but Jones. She sat off to the left and looked at me with steel in her gaze.

I retrieved the captain and sat him in the flight chair. His wide, fear-filled eyes pleaded with me. I didn’t know him and couldn’t pull his dataprint from the cloud to learn what his pressure points were. That left few options should he prove to be difficult.

“What is your name?”

“Bachar. Adrian Bachar.”

“Captain Bachar, you will key in the correct code.” I gently settled a hand on his shoulder. His trembles filtered through my touch and plucked on that part of me that hoarded data, even data born of fear and intimidation. “If you do as I say, there is no reason for me to harm any of you. I have every intention of keeping you and your crew alive.”

“I’ll lose my job.” His nervous gaze skipped to my hand on his shoulder.

“You will lose your life should you alert the authorities.”

“I’m ready.” His voice wavered.

I snapped the wrap restraining his wrists, settled my hand once again on his shoulder, and stood back. “I will be monitoring your inputs.”

“
Chitec Transport Designation Zero-Fifty, this is Gate Control. Authentication is required before you proceed. Please respond
.”

The captain reached a quivering hand forward and opened the comms. “Gate Control, this is Captain Bachar of the Chitec Transport Designation Zero-Fifty, authentication code echo-kilo-five-five-zero, requesting gate clearance.”

The captain’s voice quivered as much as his hands did. Whether Gate Control had noticed remained to be seen.

“Received, Chitec Transport Designation
Zero-Fifty, please stand by.”

The smallest indication of movement blurred to my left. Jones slammed into the back of Bachar’s chair, sending the captain sprawling across the controls. I shoved him aside and reached for Jones. Her good hand shot out and punched an innocuous-looking yellow key. I caught her hand, twisted her arm behind her back, and pinned her against the controls.

“What did you activate?”

The yellow key pulsed a steady rhythm.

Jones’s sneer slashed across her hard face. “Reinforcements, bitch.”

Through the obs window, the fleet warbirds had shifted. Both birds were turning. In seconds, they’d lock on. The warning would come next. They’d demand to search the ship. I ran a quick scenario assessment: we weren’t getting through that gate—at least, not legally.

I cracked a fist across Jones’s jaw, dropped her semiconscious weight on the floor, yanked the captain from the flight chair, and buckled up in his place. “Strap in!”

“What are you doing?!”

Ignoring Doctor Lloyd’s shriek, I wrapped my fingers around the two control columns—one for thrust, one for trajectory—and pulled the lumbering pelican out of the orderly line. Her nose lifted. Stars and black filled the obs window.

Count the stars.
I knew how to fly because Haley had. This would be … thrilling.

Doctor Lloyd strapped himself into the chair beside mine.

Run, One Thousand And One. Run.
The memory of
Hung’s voice drifted through my processes, seeking out the places where I kept fear hidden.

“You can’t outrun warbirds,” Bachar said from somewhere behind me. If he had any sense, he’d be strapping himself in, because this would be close. “You might as well give up now, before they fire.”

They won’t fire on civilians without good cause.
Dropping the nose, I lined up my sights on the gate and doubled down on engine power. The pelican growled low in her belly and surged forward.

“You’re heading for the gate?” Bachar huffed a flat, nervous laugh. “You can’t go for the gate. You don’t have clearance.”

“I think we’re beyond needing clearance,” Doctor Lloyd muttered.

Bachar realized I wasn’t slowing his ship down.

“You can’t!” Fear underlined his shout.

“Why can’t we?” Doctor Lloyd asked.

Three ships have arrived while we’ve been waiting for clearance. Gate Control must open the return passage soon to alleviate traffic.
I eased more power from the engines. Sixty percent chance of failure.
The gate will be open.

We approached the pinch point between the warbirds. They hung, motionless, weapon arrays exposed. But they wouldn’t fire, not this close to the gate. They, like Bachar, knew exactly what was about to happen. Why waste ordinance when the ship in question was likely to do the job for them?

“We don’t know which way the gate is operating,” Bachar said, his voice smaller than before as reality sank in. “If we enter into oncoming traffic, we’re dead.”

“What?” Doctor Lloyd squeaked. “One! Stop!”

I stared dead ahead and watched the gate lights ripple, calling us closer. “Everything will be fine, Doctor Lloyd.”

“Do you know that?—She knows that.” He made an odd little noise, something like a laugh, but tighter. “She’ll have run the numbers and deduced this is the most efficient course of action. It’s how she thinks. She knows the gate is open. We’ll be fine. That’s what you did, isn’t it, One?”

I smiled. A synthetic couldn’t choose to do this, to go against the odds and leave their manufactured lives in the hands of luck. Everything pointed to disaster. This was the
wrong
thing to do. The odds, the numbers, they were against me. I stared into the gate, into what could be the end, and never felt more alive.

“One?”

“Would you like me to lie,
James
?”

“Lie? What? Wh—”

“Chitec Transport Designation
Zero-Fifty, power down your engines immediately. The gate is closed to departing traffic. I repeat, the gate is closed—”

“One, dammit!”

“Stop her! She’s going to kill us.”

The shouts boiled around me, swirling into a storm of noise, but inside, all was quiet. Someone came forward, Bachar perhaps, or Jones. I couldn’t be sure and I didn’t care. The gate loomed large. The lights spilled into the pelican’s bridge and washed over us as the ship broke the surface and punched through.

I closed my eyes, alive in the face of death.

Forty percent chance. Luck.

Stars are wishes and wishes are dreams.
I’d captured mine.

Between one blink—one thread of code, one heartbeat—and the next, we reappeared on the opposite side of the gate. The original system glittered. Traffic queued around the gate’s transit lanes.

An odd tickle flitted up my insides and burst from my lips. Laughter. I blinked at James’s white, horror-filled face and laughed harder.

“She’s insane,” one of the crew muttered.

Insane?

No.

I am One.

And I’m alive.