Greenshift (10 page)

Wish you would forget about
Dale permanently.

David had to remind himself that
her enthusiasm was for the job, not for the man, but that didn’t make him any
less annoyed. After last night David’s protective instinct sped into high gear
concerning Mari. He had never felt this need to be so shielding of any other
women he’d been intimate with. He explained it away because of her age and her
inexperience, because she was a Socialite not a competent battle maiden, but
his instinct came from a place inside him that housed much deeper feelings, a
place he wasn’t ready to visit just yet.

She bounded around the corner,
her red-tipped blonde hair pulled into a high ponytail, a short, flower print
robe in place of the sheet. As she chattered about plans for that day, he
imagined having many mornings like this with her and it made him happy.

Except not in this room.

Seeing Mari’s bedroom in full
light, with blues and greens in wild prints and patterns covering every
available square centimeter, even creeping onto the ceiling, would have been somewhat
comical if it weren’t almost terrifying. The fuzzy throw pillows alone would
have sent a lesser man running for the door.

“Maybe we could get lunch
after I see Dale? You could either come with me to Wright’s Landing or we could
meet in the Hub.”

Stay out of her business.

“I can go with you to see
Dale,” he said.

“Great.” She bounced up
to his chest and gave him a peck on the lips. “Meet you in half an hour
under the trees?”

She confused him again until he
realized she meant the giant glass trees in the
Bard
‘s foyer. The azure
arcs of light flowing inside them still mesmerized him from time to time, just
like watching Mari did.

“Under the trees,” he
said.

David couldn’t believe he had to
ask Sean for another reporter. The mech tech would never let him hear the end
of it. At least it would be a good excuse to ask for an interface with the
Bard
again. He pressed the entry sensor and heard a tell-tale chime on the other
side before the door slid open.

Sean stood fiddling with some
piece of circuitry in the middle of his sitting room, which was still decorated
in the gaudy style of an old pleasure cruiser—one that hadn’t been visited by
housekeeping in the last twenty years. Alcohol bottles and empty droppers added
to the narcotic den ambiance and confirmed David’s suspicions that Sean Cryer
was a doser and an alcoholic.

“I lost my reporter,”
David said.

Sean never looked up from the
mass of wires and parts splayed across his coffee table. “When did you
lose it? I need to lock out all the codes so someone can’t access the
ship.”

“No worries there. It’s
completely obliterated.”

“How did you manage that? I
thought you were used to running an entire war ship.”

“It’s a long story, but
since you bring up the war ship thing, can you finally update my cerebro
implant so I can interface with the
Bard
directly?”

“Is that still illegal for
civilian pilots?” Sean asked.

They both knew it was, but Sean
didn’t seem like the type of guy who cared much about legalities. David thought
after a couple of weeks the younger man would start to trust him. Sean’s
substance abuse made him paranoid. Maybe he thought David was testing him. Whatever
Sean’s problem, David didn’t have time to argue with him today.

“Then just give me another
reporter.
They’re
still legal, aren’t they?”

“Last time I checked.”
Sean disappeared into a back bedroom. When he emerged, he tossed a thin silver
bracelet at David.

He snatched it up before it hit
the tile floor. “Thanks. You’re all kinds of helpful.”

“Works best if you use this
finger.” Sean held up his middle finger in a crude good-bye.

“You’re an ass. By the way,
we’re staying an extra day here at the Hub.”

That got Sean’s attention.
“What the hell for? So you can make a point?”

“It’s for Mari. She’s
meeting with a client.”

Sean didn’t say anything more,
but his expression said he wasn’t happy. That would have normally made David
smile, but he was too wrapped up in thoughts about Mari’s meeting.

He strapped the reporter on his
wrist. “You ever hear Mari talk about a former client named Dale
Zapona?”

“The name sounds familiar.
Why?” Sean asked.

“I met him last night.
Something’s off about him, but he seems to be interested in Mari doing a job
for him, bringing his latest ship up to greenshift code,” David said,
agitation working into his jaw as he remembered Dale’s sleazy advances toward
Mari.

Either David’s thoughts showed on
his face or Sean came to the same conclusion. “You think he wants to dock
her.”

“Seemed that way when he was
talking to her. But I don’t think Mari got the same impression from him.”

“She probably didn’t. Mari’s
naiveté is going to get her into trouble one of these days. The wrong guy could
take advantage of her trusting nature.” Sean’s tone gave David the
impression that Sean was hinting at someone a little closer to Mari.

Does he know about last night?
Because Sean’s attitude could be construed as jealousy. The idea that Sean
might be interested in Mari struck David hard and it came out in his tone.

“You don’t know her as well
as you think you do.”

Sean did something then that
David had never seen the mech tech do in the month he’d known him—he smiled.
Just a little upturn to the corner of his mouth, but it was enough to nearly
drive David into a rage. He shoved into the commonway before he used his
clenched fists to smash that smile right off Sean’s face.

Sean tapped his palm to activate
his implanted wrist reporter, making the already loud music raise to
ear-shattering heights within the confines of his bedroom. The pounding beats
and anti-Embassy lyrics spat out on angry tongues soothed him…or maybe it was
the restor patch he’d just jabbed into his hip. Whether through narcotic bliss
or aural disorientation, he relaxed against the bed’s bare mattress and took a
deep breath. He snagged a case from the empty night table and popped the metal
clasp. A tinny smell accosted him. Inside, swimming in clear conductor fluid,
were what looked like two silver, opaque contact lenses. They were v-mitters
and they allowed his consciousness to merge easily with an electro-magnetic
stream opening directly to the V-side.

Preparing to enter the universe
of the virtual world made him feel like going home. More so, considering he
held power as a fragger node inside the V-side while at his childhood home on
Tampa Quad there was only the helplessness of grief that touched every part of
him. Somehow his mother had overcome the loss of both her prime amour and
eldest son, but Sean just shoved their deaths further inside himself. There the
memories of the two men in his life warped over the past decade and a half—he
now associated them more with pain and abandonment than anything else. It might
not be a fair association, but in his mind it rang true.

When David first came aboard the
Bard
,
feelings which Sean hadn’t felt in years suddenly accosted him, not all of them
unpleasant, like maybe this was how his father had been when he was alive,
before combat and duty took him. Or how his brother Jameson might have turned
out. Jameson was always bigger, had the stronger bearing, even as a teenager,
but it turned out Jameson didn’t have any guts—otherwise he wouldn’t have
killed himself at sixteen and left behind a heart-broken mother and little
brother.

That’s why Sean had turned to a
new family, the fraggers. Their anti-caste, anti-government sentiments filled
his emptiness and made him strong against his grief, if not a bit hardened
toward life. A softness remained in his heart for his mother, for most women
really. That’s why he was so protective of Mari. She might annoy him with her
constant chatter and immature notions, but she was a kind, beautiful person
with a great mind. He’d entertained certain thoughts about her when she first
arrived on the
Bard
, then realized how old she was and decided they’d be
better as friends.

Now she was friends with David.
The idea bothered him. He wouldn’t exactly call it jealousy—he just didn’t like
having to worry about her. Of course there probably wouldn’t be anything to
worry about as far as David Anlow was concerned. The man was by the book and
unruffled in every aspect of his life. The military may have drummed discipline
into him, but it also bound him to rules and societal expectations. For Sean,
too much of life had to be lived outside the rules, outside the law, in fact.
Would David ever break the law, even for reasons beyond the law itself? Sean
thought not, and that’s why he had a problem with the ex-fleet captain.

His thoughts of David drifted
away with the cool sensation spreading behind his eyes into his brain. Within a
few seconds the pressure changed inside his head, announcing the arrival of
Sean’s avatar Zak into the floating V-side lobby. An endless ocean of gentle
purple waves met a silvery sky in this alternate reality which was just a step
beyond dreaming. His av Zak stood alone on a meter square platform, undulating
with the soft roll of the lobby’s sea while Sean’s body remained safe aboard
the
Bard
. Should anyone come into his bedroom, it would simply look as
though he were in a deep sleep.

But his senses were active, all
except his ability to smell—once the architects found a way to make scent
active within the V-side the experience would truly become immersive. His
synapses fired, processing his environment as though Sean were physically
there, not just represented by Zak. He could even feel and react to the moving
balance of the slate-colored raft as the sea lapped beneath it.

Invites to multiple worlds within
the V-side awaited him in the form of small, blue globes the size of Sean’s
fist. The lighter the shade of blue, the more important the invite. Sean still
ignored them all, even one powdery blue one from a fragger boss. He hadn’t been
officially summoned so whatever it was could wait until he found out about Mari’s
new business associate.

Sean didn’t even plan to enter a V-side
world right now, just wait in the lobby for Bullseye, one of his fragger contingency
whom he trusted with the delicate nature of information gathering.

A second pop preceded the
appearance of a second raft. A young man with green spiky hair waved.
“Hey, Zak! Found what you wanted.”

Bullseye was always eager to
please. What the man, if indeed he even was male, did in real life, Sean
couldn’t say. For security reasons, no one except the bosses knew any other
fragger’s identity. That’s why Sean was Zak, a generic-looking blonde guy whose
features only vaguely resembled his own and whose build was much smaller than
Sean’s actual half-Armadan frame.

“Thanks, Bullseye. What’s
the deal with Dale Zapona?”

“He’s squeaky clean.”

“In other words, he’s hiding
something,” Sean said in Zak’s voice, a tad more tenor than the real
thing.

“You better believe it. Take
a look.”

A tingle sparked to life in the
back of Sean’s mind as he received the data from Bullseye. He processed the
official Embassy file and found markers where sections had been deleted at the
source. The Embassy tech who had performed the erasure did a better job than
most Sean had run across, but still left a dusting of code like a trail to each
instance of removal.

“That Dale guy has friends
in high places,” Bullseye said.

“Looks that way. I
appreciate your help with this, and your discretion.”

“No problem.” Bullseye
hesitated, then said almost sheepishly, “I’m heading to a slasher session
with some of the other guys. You want to join us? We could use you to balance
out the teams.”

“Not this time.”

Bullseye’s expression read
disappointment, though Sean never took any facial or body cues as sincere in
the V-side—it was too easy to program certain responses and call them up as desired.
However, since Sean’s contingency was always trying to get him to enter a
gaming world with them, Bullseye’s reaction was probably honest. Sean just
didn’t like to get too close to anyone in here. Or anyone out there, he decided
as he unplugged to rejoin the real world.

“Thank you for coming with
me,” Mari said to David. “I’m a little nervous. How’s my outfit? Is
it too stuffy?” Perhaps she should have dressed more practically. This
morning the little grey skirt, which rode a bit high on her thighs, and the
white sleeveless blouse which plunged a bit low at her neck, seemed like a good
idea. Of course, she didn’t really own anything practical, so this was the
least ostentatious outfit she could come up with.

“Definitely not too stuffy,”
David murmured.

Her head snapped around. “Should
I have tried to look more scientific?” She had no idea how she would do
that.

David’s warm hand cupped her bare
knee and gave it a little squeeze as the Wrights Landing transport curved past
another private gate leading to a palatial stretch of grounds. She’d been so
pre-occupied she’d missed the gardenia bloom on the way here.

“You look nice. The
important thing is you know more about hydroponics systems than anyone I’ve
ever met. You’re ready to take the greenshift head on.”

“How many other botanists
have you met?” she joked, happy that David had taken an interest in her
career. Not even her family had. Or maybe they simply couldn’t understand her
need to be more than a mother, not that she wasn’t looking forward to that
role, especially now that she had become so close to David. She imagined more
than a few times since their coupling session about conceiving with him. She’d
keep those thoughts to herself, however. After all, last night was only her
first time. If she convinced Dale to give her this contract, she and David
could have many nights together.