Greenshift (18 page)

It took a moment, but Carlos
finally pushed away from the wall.

Now that she had a little space,
Mari felt bolder. “Is this what you planned last year when you hired me on
Deleine?” She searched the ceiling until she spotted a camera in one
corner. She walked over to stand just below it, knowing Dale was looking down
on her.

“Why else would I bother
with you?”
His voice now crackled from behind her.

She noticed the speakers set into
the ceiling.

“Ironically, the only
thing of value you have to offer me is your genetic pollution. Because let’s
face it. You’re not much of a scientist.”

Carlos chuckled.

“Now settle in. We’ll be
there before you know it.”

Mari watched Carlos until the
door slid closed behind him. Tears rolled down her cheeks so she kept her back
to the camera. Dale wouldn’t have the satisfaction. She surveyed the steel
walls of her temporary prison and suddenly became paralyzed by her fear and
humiliation. How did her world morph into this nightmare so fast? This morning
she had woken up in David’s arms, feeling like she could conquer the world, get
her career back on track, live the life she had planned. Her conscious mind
barely accepted this sudden reversal.

Probably because acceptance would
mean the end for her.

I’m going to kill you in a
hundred different ways.

As David prepared the
Bard
for
takeoff, he imagined all of Dale Zapona’s deaths—each one slower and messier
than the last one.

The black torbernite floor of the
bridge threatened to swallow David, just like the darkness of his mood. Maybe
because it felt as though the gun metal grey walls pressed a little closer with
each ticking minute. Even the late afternoon sun glittering on the bay out of
the cockpit window mocked him, reminding him he couldn’t freeze time for Mari. Or
reverse it, taking them back to this morning, wrapped in the colorful cheer of
her room. He’d tell her to forget about her meeting with Dale, convince her to
stay in bed all day, delighting in their new closeness.

David blamed himself as much for
Mari’s abduction as he did Dale. The guilt and helplessness of waiting slashed
away the calm David had barely regained after his encounter with the
contractors. For the first time in decades, David had succumbed to bloodlust.
Ward was the hapless, though not innocent, victim. Throughout David’s service
in the fleet, he’d seen bloodlust many times in some of his troopers, and he had
only a few times experienced that blinding aggression to which Armadans were
genetically prone. The sensation still echoed through his veins.

As he waited for clearance to
leave, he stared at the vid of Mari and him kissing on Shiraz Dock. Ben had
sent it in the guise of a joke yesterday, but David knew his brother was
actually sentimental and figured David would want to keep the memory. Ben was
right. David had come to cherish this little clip of his life since Dale had
taken Mari from him.

Maybe David should have gone to
the authorities, but he had no real proof that Mari was even with the man. Perhaps
Ben had found out something else in this last half hour. But then he would have
contacted David immediately with any news. It was wishful thinking…and wishes
were for children.

I will bring you home, Mari.

Funny how, not two days ago,
David hadn’t accepted the
Bard
as home, but now that he associated the
ship with Mari it felt like
theirs
.

Footsteps sounded in the
commonway leading to the bridge. David closed the air screen.

“I have their flight plan.”
Sean stepped inside and walked through the emptiness where Mari and David’s
image had been a second before.

How Sean managed to obtain the
Thrall
‘s
flight plan before Ben’s fleet connections would be a topic for conversation later.
Right now David was just grateful for the information.

Solimar Robbins entered behind
Sean and strapped into the crash couch on the far wall of the bridge. Normally
she stayed in her suite during takeoff and landing because of her
sensitivity
to g-forces. David hoped she was here now out of concern for Mari and not so
she would have a first-hand account of whatever happened for her archives.

“Feed me the
coordinates.” David prompted the holo-controls. A glowing, transparent orb
enveloped the pilot’s chair.

Sean had already called up the
co-pilot’s seat and its controls. The simmering anger David held in check
heated to a boil. Not because it was Sean sitting in the chair beside David,
but because it
wasn’t
Mari.

“I uploaded the projected
route and where they should be along it at this point,” Sean said.
“We might not be able to intercept them before they reach Deleine.”

“You said the
Bard
could catch a freighter any day,” David snapped. A lot could happen to
Mari on the
Thrall
during that time, none of which he was prepared to
face.

Sean’s tone was even and a little
quiet. “On the short run we could because we have speed in the beginning,
but the freighter picks up its pace exponentially the further it goes. We max
out.”

“Even if you add another
cylinder to our reactor?”

“I already have. It’s loaded
and ready to kick in once we clear atmosphere, but we’d be lucky to catch them
before they land. Maybe a few hours afterward, but….”

David stared at his controls.
“You’re sure?”

“Yeah. In fact, I was being
generous with the odds. It doesn’t make me feel too good either.”

“I can’t believe this is
happening,” Solimar said barely above a whisper.

Neither can I
.

The comm sounded with a go ahead
for lift-off from Shiraz. He wouldn’t give up while there was still a chance.
And maybe Ben could come through with some unauthorized fleet help after all.

“Stop watching me!”

Mari stared at the corner camera.
The little green light below its lens stared back at her. She was sure that
behind that lens Dale, or worse, Carlos was observing everything she did in
this little prison cell.

“Someone’s going to come for
me. And you’re both going to be convicted of abduction. That carries a big
sentence.”

At least she assumed it did. The
Media never reported much on abductions, either because there weren’t many or
she just never heard about them on the channels she watched. The glitz of
fashion and celebrities didn’t mix well with the suffering of real people. A
small part of her always felt a kinship to the wealthy, carefree celebrities. She
thought by leaving Deleine she could have a similar life. That dream soon
evaporated, and her circumstances right now left no doubt that she was, and
maybe always had been by consequence of birth, one of the people meant to
suffer.

Mari picked up the chair and
lobbed it at the protruding surveillance box. Her feeble attempt fell short of
its mark. She picked it up again and stood closer. This time it caught the
bottom of the grey plastic box and dislodged the camera inside. The less delicate
camera, encased in metal and no bigger than her fist, hit the rubber floor, but
bounced and rolled without much real damage. She lifted the chair and smashed
the camera’s housing over and over, pretending it was Carlos’ head. Or Dale’s.
She hated them both.

“The only thing of value
you have to offer is your genetic pollution.”
Dale’s words from
earlier still taunted her.

Though Mari had always been self-conscious
about her eyes, she had never thought of their uniqueness as an indicator for
faulty genes. Only certain families had these particular genetic markers which
left them susceptible to the reaction she had had from her childhood vaccines.
It was rare. She was the only one out of all of her brothers, sisters, and
cousins—one hundred seventy total in that particular generation—whose irises
faded and distorted from their deep, rich brown to a pale coral.

Finding out why Mari had the
reaction when no one else in her family did was what prompted her to study
medicine in the first place. She had a secret desire that she barely admitted
to herself—she always thought she could find a way to reverse the pigment
change.

Though the doctors from her town,
including her uncle, assured her there was nothing wrong with her, that the
effect was a random mutation, Mari believed there
was
something wrong
with her, a sentiment that others casually, at times knowingly, reinforced with
their stares, their cruel comments, their avoidance.

David had never avoided her. In
fact, he went out of his way to engage her. She put the chair down lightly as she
thought about how he looked into her distinctive eyes as though enchanted,
especially while they coupled. He was gentle and giving even though his body
was hard and strong. She had never met a man like him, couldn’t imagine any
others even existed. Now she might not see him again. She might not see anyone
again.

A sob almost burst from her
throat. The next man to touch her so intimately would not be David, would not
be so kind, would—according to Dale—want to see tears drowning her
coral-colored irises from pain. All because she was different. She never hated
what the reaction had done to her more than at this moment.

She heaved the chair above her
head again with tired arms when she noticed the camera’s battery chamber lay
exposed through a crack in the metal. As she tossed the chair aside, an idea was
already forming. The first spark of hope since her abduction.

Settling cross-legged on the
dirty rubber flooring, she snatched up the damaged camera to inspect it further.
She tried prying the casing open, but managed only to bloody the pads of her
fingers. The battery remained snug in its chamber, teasing her. She wiped her
hands on her white shirt, the stains blending with the filth already ground
into the fabric. There had to be something in this sparse cell she could use for
a tool. The chair seemed impervious to all manner of abuse, considering she’d
barely dented the frame after her attack on the camera housing. A drip from
behind her drew her attention to the disgusting spigot area.

The handle.

She abandoned the camera and
scampered onto the wet tile in her bare feet. The puddled water squished
between her toes, its chill sending a splinter of cold through her whole body.
She reached for the handle and twisted it. Water gurgled out and slapped onto
the tile. She kept twisting and felt a slight give. Using both hands on the
oblong piece of solid metal, she forced one turn of the handle, breaking it off
at a weak spot. Mari sprinted back to the camera, not caring about the water
free-flowing into the backed up drain.

The handle was about the same
size as her middle finger, but the torque it exerted against the casing did
what her flesh couldn’t. The crack expanded. Holding the camera steady with one
hand, she fished her little finger into the space. Her nail caught on the edge
of the battery, which was only as big as the pad of her thumb. Mari held her
breath to keep steady as she maneuvered the battery toward the opening. Just as
she got the battery halfway out, it slipped off her finger and tumbled back
inside.

“Shit.”

She tamped down her frustration
and tried again. This time she twisted her finger just enough to avoid the same
circumstance as her first attempt. When she extracted the battery and held its
feathery weight in her hand, she laughed out loud. This little thing was going
to save her life. She hoped.

“No, it will work.” She
spoke the words out loud as an affirmation. “It’ll work.”

Carlos waited in Dale’s lounge for
him to react to the camera going offline after the blonde had beaten it right
off the wall. He was actually surprised she had it in her. Her unexpected fight
stirred his arousal again.

Dale only glanced at the dark
screen labeled
CELL 4
among the silver-framed monitors on the cobalt-colored
wall to their left. He said nothing as he sipped one of those stupid fruity
neons. The florescent colors were off-putting enough, but the mango smell of
the ultra-sweet drink completely eclipsed any trace of alcohol. It made Carlos
want to hold Dale’s mouth open as he poured a fifth of bourbon down his gullet
just so he could feel a man’s drink burn down his throat and into his gut.

His boss turned his attention
back to the five Media screens against the far wall of his suite’s lounge. This
was how Dale spent most of his time during flights on his freighters—holed up
in a luxury suite, which cost as much to overhaul as it would to refurbish the
entire crew level. He cycled through the various feeds until he found a sex vid
for the huge main screen and twenty-five hour news and celebrity feeds from all
six planet moons to fill up the smaller screens flanking the middle one.

He turned down the grunting and
moaning and upped the volume on an animated debate among the Quorum of
Archivists, which played out on the bottom corner screen.

“I’m just saying that someone
needs to do something about these fraggers before they get organized.”
Archivist Andravo made the point to a smattering of applause from some of the
other delegates.

“That’s just it. They aren’t
organized, simply a hodge-podge of disenfranchised Lower Caste activists who
happen to be a little tech savvy. Hardly anything to call in the Armada
for….”
Phoebe Llewellyn, now that was a woman who could make even an
apathetic man give a shit about politics. She had a knockout body and that blue
streaked hair did something for him.

But hearing her prattle on had
him losing interest fast, especially as the porn vid switched to an up-close shot
of a blonde woman performing fellatio on a man tied to a chair. The image fed
Carlos’ carnal appetite. He imagined—
what’s her name? Maria? Mari? Yeah,
Mari, that was it.
He imagined forcing Mari to her knees to act out this
same scene. Only he sure as shit wasn’t going to let her tie him to a chair.