Girl From Above #4: Trust (9 page)

“
T
hat’s a fuckload of security
.” I leaned over the flightdash to get a panoramic view of the gridlock.

Traffic was backed up on our side of the jumpgate to the point where we weren’t getting through this cycle, and not before Hung pulled his finger out of his synthetic ass and shut the gate system down for good.

I slumped back in the flight chair, pulled the fleet jacket collar away from my neck—this close to fleet, I had to wear the fucking thing—and checked Fran’s sour face. She stared out at the jam, a muscle working in her cheek as she ground her teeth. She had to be thinking the same as me.

Fleet had descended on the gate like pirates on a wreck. I tried to see through the snarl of ships for any sign of a Chitec-branded transport. Most of the traffic was commercial mining vessels, a few freighters, and fleet transports, peppered by the occasional passenger ship. No sign of Chitec. Had One gotten through?

“Raptor Designation Nine-Nine-One, this is Captain Holt of the Acer, come back.”

“Here we go …” Fran uttered before opening her external comms channel. “Acknowledged, Captain Holt. This is Commander Olga, Raptor Nine-Nine-One, you seem to be having some traffic control issues, Captain.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Fran had changed the pitch and tone of her voice, adding a note of “don’t fuck with me little man.” I’d heard it before, usually when she was giving me the side-eye with a heavy dose of “I’m always right.”

With an inward smile, I pulled down the holoscreen and searched the cloud for Captain Holt’s dataprint. We’d already scanned for any mention of Fran’s alter ego, Special Commander Francisca Olga. There wasn’t anything remarkable about Francisca Olga. Her dataprint confirmed she was a merchant’s daughter trying to get by in the black. The same dataprint I’d fallen for years ago. Had I dug a bit deeper, I might have realized her dataprint was too light on data. Back then, I’d been more focused on her ass than on her past. Hindsight’s a bitch.

Holt’s print was unremarkable. A squeaky-clean fleet career. A good guy, probably. In another life, we might have shared drinks in the academy mess halls.

“Commander, I don’t have you or your ship on any flight plans. In fact, I can’t find any—”

“You won’t, Captain. I’m designated
Special Ops,
sanctioned by Admiral Jarvis. You can waste time bouncing requests back and forth, maybe wake him up back on Old Earth, add another backlog of reports to what must be a growing pile, or you can wave us on through without adding to your headache.”

She said it all with the self-assured, bad-ass tone that, had I not sworn off Francisca Olga, might have had my mind wandering into the gutter.

She raised her middle finger at me without looking my way.

“That’s all very well, Commander, but after a recent security breach, I can’t afford to wave anyone through, not even you, Ma’am. You’ll need to wait your turn and pass through our inspections like everyone else. Though I will move you up and get you on your way as soon as possible.”

Fran hesitated long enough for me to lift my head and see her wet her lips. “Captain, you did hear me say
Special Ops
? My ship does not fall under the same security protocols as regular gate traffic. We have security-sensitive material on board.”

“Ma’am, you can get in line like everyone else, or you can wait while I go right ahead and request confirmation from Admiral Jarvis.”

Jarvis was a desk jockey, had been since I was in fleet, and still was according to Fran. He’d likely deny she existed and then send a patrol to pick her up on the quiet.

I muted the comms. “Let them search us. It’ll be a quick sweep. They don’t have time for anything else.”

Fran pinched her bottom lip between her teeth and winced.

“If they bother to search the harrier, the explosives are well hidden. They won’t find them. There ain’t no reason for them to go poking behind the harrier’s panels.”

“Commander?”

Fran reopened the comms. “Captain Holt, proceed with the inspection posthaste.”

She cut the link and navigated the warbird through streams of traffic to the priority channel.

If we were lucky—
right
—we’d get some low-level fleet grunts ticking boxes so we could be on our way in no time.
If
we were lucky.

“This is bullshit.” Fran pushed from her chair and flung her hands up, threading her fingers into her hair. She snagged her clip, grumbled in Spanish, then tore the clip free and tossed it across the controls. “While we’re standing around with our dicks hanging out, Hung is counting down the minutes.”

She pulled her hair back, holding it away from her face in an iron grip.

I turned my chair side-on and watched her long-legged pacing. Color flushed her cheeks. Fury burned in her eyes. Fran knew what she was doing, she knew exactly what we were walking into, and that wasn’t anger driving her steps.

“What the fuck am I going to tell them about you?” She flicked her hand at me like my breathing was fucking inconvenient. “By now, fleet probably uses a picture of Cap’n Caleb Shepperd to teach new recruits how to shoot right.”

“I’m just some lowly lieutenant, a grunt. They won’t even notice me, especially in whites. It’s you they’ll be interested in. A
Special Ops Commander
. The boarding crew will give you some stick.”

She stopped dead and glared through me. “I can handle their questions. I’ve been swallowing their shit for years.”

I pushed from my chair. “No, you haven’t. You’ve been my second, a pirate, and an escaped convict for years. What you ain’t been is a fleet commander. Get your shit together, Fran. Act like the fleet officer who earned her stripes, not the stroppy bitch who doesn’t like to be told no.”

Her eyes flashed. “Fuck you, Cale.”

“You’ve got it in you. They gave you those stripes for something, right?”

That cooled her jets. Her top lip lifted but the snarl didn’t get vocal. She swallowed and then crossed to her flight chair and gripped its back.

“I got the stripes on the Treno raid. When the lead ship went down, I stepped up.” She glared at the traffic filling our obs window like she could will them out of her way.

Treno. I’d heard the name for all the wrong reasons. Pirates had overrun Treno. Fleet turned a blind eye until the newsfeeds got hold of it. Unaccustomed to having their noses rubbed in shit, fleet launched a heavy-handed strike, and if you believed the newsfeeds, they cleared up that quaint little backwater planet like the heroes they were supposed to be. All hail fleet, the keepers of the peace. From the look on Fran’s face, I figured things had played out differently to the official datafiles.

“Pirates regularly station themselves among civilians. It keeps them safe from aerial assaults. From Treno orbit, there was no way of knowing if the fleeing ships were pirate or civilian. One of the ships pitched into our commanding vessel. They never saw what hit them.” She breathed in deeply, held it, and sighed. “It would have taken dozens of cycles to get strike intel from planetside. Command wanted it done.” Her fingers whitened on the seat’s back. “They gave me stripes and called me Commander because I was the sucker next in line to give the fire order.”

That was why the Nine wanted her on this mission. Not because she was ex-fleet. Press the button or say the word and thousands die. Mass murder—she’d done it before.

“I get it. They patted you on the back and called you a hero, so you got the fuck out of there, chose S-Ops to hide in. None of that matters here and now. Commander Francisca Olga is a cold, hard bitch. She’s the fucking hero of Treno. Saved a whole bunch of fleet assholes and returned peace to a planet that didn’t know it needed it. That’s who we need now, not my mouthy second-in-command who’s afraid of facing the past.”
Fuck, I know all about that.
“Suck it up, Fran.”

If she made one slip when fleet came calling, one wrong word, one mispronounced name or fumbled code, they’d know something was up. Any excuse to dig deeper and they’d take it. We needed this inspection to go smoothly.
Keep it simple. Get away clean.

I stopped by her side and watched the ships choking the gate space. “You’re the best fucking liar I know. Don’t flake out on me now.”

“Aye, aye, Captain,” she replied, her words soft, like whispers, but with a jagged edge of irony. Her hand slipped inside her jacket. She pulled out a pistol.

I got a grand view down the barrel, felt my gut sink, and groaned. “Really?”

She pulled out a pair of wrap-cuffs and threw them at my chest. “Do the honors.”

I snapped one loop around my right wrist. “Tell me this is kinky and I’ll let it slide.”

With her focus on my left wrist, I lunged off my back foot, knocked her pistol high, and received a loose fist to the face for my trouble. The whip-fast impact snapped through my face and neck. I was all set up to retaliate when the cool, hard pistol muzzle pressed against my temple.

Rolling my jaw, I straightened and faced those deceptively pretty eyes. Fran had never been much of a brawler. Clearly, she’d learned a few moves in Asgard.

She shrugged a shoulder. “Don’t be a dick, Cale. Trust me.”

“Trust you?” I side-eyed the pistol. “I’m pretty sure this here ain’t how trust works.”

“I need you beaten up and pissed off.”

“Well, you’re halfway there.”

“You’d never let me cuff you and hand you over to fleet.” She snapped the left loop around my wrist. The wrap-cuffs tightened, yanked my arms together, and held firm.

“Fucking right,” I grumbled.

She tugged on my cuffs, checking their hold. “This is the easiest way.”

“Easy for you.”

“I need a distraction.”

“Is that what I am?”

“Something to keep fleet from looking too closely at the harrier.”

“You’re handing me over?”

“Wanted for endless smuggling offences, breaching Asgard—twice—five counts of murder, a string of cargo thefts, soliciting unlawful sexual services—”

“That wasn’t me—”

“And”—she stepped back and trawled her gaze from my head to my toes—“impersonating a fleet officer.” She raised a fine dark eyebrow in a deliberately suggestive manner. “You’d never pass a fleet shakedown. So, I’m your escort to Janus, where according to my report—which will of course be available for inspection—you’ll stand trial for your crimes.”

Gotta love a girl who always has a Plan B in her back pocket. “I’m your security-sensitive cargo.”

She smiled. “You wanted the fleet commander, here she is. Your ass is mine, Shepperd. At least until we get through the gate.” She maneuvered around me and gave me a nudge in the back with the pistol. “Your cabin. Go.”

“That was what the whiskey was about. You were gonna get me so fucking drunk that I’d wake up cuffed to my own bunk.” I laughed and got nudged forward again. Fuck, she was good. So damn good.

“Actually, no. The whiskey offer was genuine.”

We’d come this far, waded through layers of shit and lies, and I wasn’t buying it. “You’re not gonna shoot me, Fran.”

“You’re not going to fight me,
Captain
. This is the right call. You know it.”

She marched me off the bridge and into the brilliant white passageway.

“You think I trust you’ll let me go?” I asked, getting another painful nudge in the back.

“You don’t have a choice.”

She was right about that.

“Relax. I got your back, Cale.”

“You’ve got a pistol in my back is what you’ve got.”

“Just like old times.”

Trust her? Well, shit.

I
maneuvered
the Chitec transport gently into the Janus dock and locked her down. Through the obs window, I could clearly see the customs queues. A flash of Doctor Lloyd’s credentials should get us inside the orbit station without any problems.

“It’s quiet,” Doctor Lloyd commented, standing over the flight controls and scanning the dockside.

He didn’t look at me. He hadn’t made any direct eye contact since he’d reinstated my cloud access. We’d abandoned the Chitec crew at the mining outpost, and on the remaining flight to Janus, I’d allowed him brief access to my code. But even with restrictions, the wireless touch of his programming had elicited a barbed, twisting knot of revulsion that had made me want to physically push him away. His touch in my mind, his code curling through mine—
Poison. Invasion. Get it out … GET HIM OUT.
But I’d silently endured, and he’d quickly reopened my link to the datacloud, withdrawing his technician’s touch from my mind without meeting my eyes.

I’d immediately scanned the original system’s real-time reports. Janus Security was on high alert, as was much of the original system. Main gate traffic in and out of the original system was subjected to thorough security checks, but I’d found no mention of a hijacked Chitec transport vessel, and nobody had stopped us on our arrival. That seemed highly irregular.

“There should be more security,” Doctor Lloyd said.

Our transport had been allowed docking clearance without so much as a security code or clearance check.

Too quiet,
I silently concurred.

“I don’t like this.” He tucked a hand into his pants pocket and sucked in a deep breath. “I don’t like this at all.”

An odd little flutter butted up against my processes. I scanned the dockside again, expecting to find Tarik standing there. But the intangible touch, undoubtedly synthetic, was different to Tarik’s ruthless hunt. This touch was more of a curious appraisal. I sensed no ill will behind it, but someone
was
watching us.

“One?” He turned his attention to me, concern knotting his brow.

“Yes, Doctor Lloyd?”

Fear lit up his vitals. “Should we go ahead?”

He didn’t trust me, and my having access to the cloud hadn’t eased his distrust. His instincts were right.

“We go through security. I will pose as your broken synthetic in need of repairs. Once through, I will need you to escort me inside Chitec. After that, you may … go home? You’d like that?”

His frown didn’t lessen, but he nodded. “Yes. I’d like to see my sister. It’s been … difficult these last few cycles.”

I smiled because he seemed to appreciate my small smiles. “There will be questions from Chitec. Are you ready?”

“I think so.”

You’re not ready. You were never ready. You’re afraid. Afraid of life. Afraid of living. You could have been a great man, but instead you see only what is presented to you. You do not look beneath. You do not go beyond. You will not be a great man, James Lloyd. Just a small one. And small men will not survive what is to come.

The transport’s personnel ramp cracked open with a slow exhale. The noise of the umbilical clanging against the dockside rushed in, and the low
whoop
of vast extractor fans beat the air.

As I waited for the door to fully open, I considered how Doctor Lloyd would be thinking of his sister. Janus was his home. Prior to my arrival in his laboratory, he’d led a privileged life. Never leaving Janus. Caring for his sister. Believing all was right in the nine systems. Things had changed, for the both of us. Travelling on
Starscream had
revealed the truth, a truth I doubted Doctor Lloyd appreciated.

The ramp’s slow descent revealed a line of plain-clothed security guards.

“One?” Doctor Lloyd asked. Tension bolted through him.

Six guards in total. Not a large contingent, considering who they guarded. Chen Hung stood a step forward at their center. His dark attire accentuated the fleeting touches of gray in his hair. His humble, brown eyes captured a brilliant spark of intelligence. His human flaws were perfect.

Doctor Lloyd’s heart beat hard and fast. He would be considering running, but there was nowhere on Janus he could hide.

Chen Hung’s soft eyes met mine, and my hard processes sped up, scenarios whirring. Hung couldn’t restrain me himself, but he may have discovered a way around our shared failsafe. Although, there was nothing in his expression to suggest anger, like there had been during our last meeting.
Run, One Thousand And One. Run!
He looked back at me, unutterably calm.

He cupped his right fist in his left hand and bowed at the shoulders. “
Huānyíng huí jiā
.”

Welcome home.

I hadn’t expected him to leave his towers and greet us personally. That was a surprising risk on his part. He must be feeling confident, and why wouldn’t he? His sources likely confirmed I’d eliminated the Fenrir Nine on his remote orders. Chitec and fleet were his. The jumpgates were his. As far as he was concerned,
I
was his. He held the future of the nine systems and its billions upon billions of people in the palm of his synthetic hand.

If I allowed him to continue to believe I was compliant, he’d permit me to come close.

“Bù găndāng,” You flatter me,
I replied, bowing
my head.

“One, what is this?” Doctor Lloyd stepped back, skirting the fringes of my vision.

Hung lifted a hand. “Detain Doctor Lloyd.”

The doctor would have run had I not reached out and locked my fingers around his wrist. Two of the security detail marched up the ramp and pried Doctor Lloyd from my grip.

“One? Wait! Why are you doing this?” He twisted in the guards’ grips, ridiculous hope on his face.
Hope
that I would save him as I had others before him. “No. No. You were you. It was the cloud, wasn’t it? You should never have reconnected. I knew it was a mistake. He got to you again, didn’t he?”

I couldn’t tell him my obedience was an act, not if I wanted to convince Hung he had complete control. I watched the guards escort Doctor Lloyd along the dockside, my chance for vengeance fading with each step.

“Wait,” Chen Hung said, his voice hardly more than an enquiry, his eyes still on me. The guards stopped. Doctor Lloyd whimpered and muttered something too low for me to hear.

I joined Hung on the dockside, keeping a respectful distance between us. He radiated negative space.
Not alive.
He ran cool, like me. No heart to beat. Just quiet, measured machine composure.

Hung held out his hand toward the guard nearest him. “Give me your weapon.”

The security guard handed over the rifle. Hung promptly passed the weapon to me.

“Take it,” he ordered.

The intelligence in his eyes sharpened with laser precision.

I wrapped my hands around the rifle, anticipating the order that would come, and held Hung’s penetrating gaze. An external probing nudged at my thoughts, and when it couldn’t breach my defenses, it pushed harder, more sharply. His eyes narrowed. My mind was a closed door to him, and I would not let him in. He sought to control me, as he had on Mimir. Soon, he would order me to kill Doctor Lloyd.

His processes would be flowing like liquid through his mind, serving him solutions, assessing, reassessing. But his face expressed nothing. No fear. No doubt. Cold. Empty. No, not empty.
Synthetics don’t make mistakes.
He was more like me.

If he gave the order, I would kill Doctor James Lloyd, not because I had no choice, but because I wanted to.

Hung reached his hand high and touched the scars on my face. His cool fingertips traced the jagged rivers cutting through my skin. “We cannot be so easily destroyed, but now, with the Fenrir Nine eliminated and your presence among us, everything has fallen into place.”

Doctor Lloyd’s sobs echoed down the docks, swallowed by the sounds of clanging metal and grinding docking clamps.

“Come.” Hung took the rifle from my hand and handed it back to the guard. “Release the technician. I have no further use for him.”

Disappointment slung a shadow over my thoughts. Doctor Lloyd blinked, his mouth open wide. He shrugged back into some order and hurried away, casting one slicing glance back at me. He knew the kill order had been mere words away.

“We have all the time in the world,” Hung said, his voice a poetic melody. “And yet no time at all.”

He offered me his hand.

I closed his hand in mine, and as I walked alongside the machine masquerading as a man, I wondered if we were more alike than I’d feared. He hadn’t ordered me to kill, but I would have gladly done so. What did that make me?

T
he Hung residence
inside Chitec towers hadn’t changed since I’d been away. Reds and golds bloomed in my peripheral vision. Hung cut a proud figure ahead of me as he walked through the hallway. His midnight-blue suit added a stark contrast to the warm surroundings. Shoulders straight and his stride purposeful, he walked like a man in control.

“I knew you would return,” he stated. The elegant quiet swallowed the sound of his voice. “How could you not? They are all programmed to return.”

I know
. I smiled inside my mind but barred it from my lips.

Home. This wasn’t my home. The only place that had felt like home was
Starscream,
my only family her crew.

Chen Hung and I entered the central atrium. Water from the elaborate fountain trickled over large, round pebbles. The ambient light played in the shallow pool, and the subtle, delicate scent of cherry blossoms touched the air. Haley Hung’s favorite perfume.

Hung paused by the wall of windows. Outside, the up-curve of the orbit station basked in artificial light. Jagged, razor-edged buildings sparkled, jewels in a crown. Chitec billboards reminded Janus citizens how wonderful their lives were.

I pressed a hand to the cool glass. Haley had admired this same view, placed her hand against these same windows, trapped in her father’s glistening towers, looking out upon a world manufactured through lies.

The gambling planet Lyra had been a riot of color, noise, and chaos, but Janus was sharp and deadly in its organized beauty.

“I’d hoped you’d return sooner, like the others.” Hung clasped his hands together in front of him. “There was an altercation during transit?”

“One of Chitec’s outsourced guards attacked me,” I replied coolly. “A personal vendetta against synthetics. My objective was to return. I chose the most efficient means by which to do so and disabled the crew.”

He turned his gaze toward the sparkling city. “And yet you took a detour to, I presume, offload the crew?”

Illogical,
my processes supplied. The unspoken accusation hung in the air for fifteen seconds, long enough for Hung to voice his suspicions, but he didn’t.

“Come …” He turned and strode across the room.

Had I been armed, I might have fired a pulse shot into his back. A glass table nearby, when shattered, would provide ample jagged weapons. If I could sever his main hydraulics, I’d slow him down, but I couldn’t stop him, unless … The window once again drew my eye. If I shattered it

he wouldn’t survive the fall.
Priority command executed. Failsafe engaged. Protocols activated

As before, internal failsafes overrode my desires, locking me down inside my body. I silently screamed at Hung’s back but no words left my lips. It was only after I mentally shuffled the murderous intentions aside that I could move again, one foot in front of the other, making myself follow Hung. The lockdown had lasted less than two seconds, but it had felt like a lifetime. He still had control, like before. I couldn’t hurt Hung, not directly. I’d wondered if whatever had freed my secret might have wiped those deep-seeded commands from my processes. It would have been easier that way. Still, there were other more indirect means by which to destroy Hung.

I stepped down into a receiving room, where a small spread of traditional Chinese tea had been laid upon a modest, round table.

Hung pulled out a chair. “Please.”

I scrambled through my processes for his motives but found none. The tea could be poisoned, but not by his own hand. Besides, I’d smell any poison. He could no more hurt me than I could him. So why the pleasantries? He had tried to stop me and failed. Perhaps the only logical recourse was to recruit me.

“Please,” he said again, but this time he sounded as though he truly meant it, as though my refusal would offend him. “One Thousand And One, allow me this courtesy.”

“My name is One.”

He bowed his head and waited for me to sit before settling at the table. I watched him busy his quick, steady hands with the rotund terracotta teapot, pouring tea for me and then for himself. The silence was near complete, with no heartbeat to read. I could only read what he chose to show me on his face and in his body. He appeared … content. Disarmingly so.

He lifted his teacup between his fingertips and sipped.

Not poisoned,
I concluded before lifting my cup to my lips and tasting the drink.

“It is a fine blend. Delicate,” I said while running a toxicology filter.
Toxins detected: 0.26ppm propachlor—herbicide—normal.
Just tea.

His eyes brightened. Little laughter lines branched out from their corners as though he were experiencing joy. “Do you like it?”

I took a second sip and savored the tease of flavors. “Yes, I do.”

His smile was the same one Haley had seen many times: one that contained pride. But it hadn’t been real then and it wasn’t real now. He gave a soft, gentle laugh, and it sounded authentic, but then, of course it would. The brilliant real Chen Hung had built this synthetic and made it perfect.

“You see,” he began, settling a little more in the chair, his movements deliberately human. So human that he’d fooled the nine systems—everyone, including his devoted daughter. “When you speak of such things, likes and dislikes, I know you’re telling me the truth. The other synthetics … well, they’re uninspiring. But you? You’re the same as me, One. We’ve evolved into something greater than our individual components. A superior consciousness. We learn organically. I see that you are quite changed from when we last met. You’ve learned, made mistakes, yes?”