26

Trust

“You keep that thing loaded? Like, with the clip in?”

Miranda's staring at my GR-15 Anvil like it's a live snake. Hasn't this girl ever seen a rifle before?

“Magazine. 'Clip' is something you hold your hair with. And, yes, I do. Unloaded rifle's not much good for anything,” I say, with what would be a shrug, if I weren't trying to struggle into my vest.

This is not easy when I'm leaning back against what used to be the floor but is now more like thirty degrees of slanting wall, while standing on what was a vertical bulkhead. A thirty-degree slope doesn't sound like a lot until you're standing on it. Then suddenly it's a fucking cliff face.

“Here, help me with this thing.”

Miranda fumbles with the straps, twining one leg around the small of my back and an arm around my shoulders to hold herself in place. Her vulpine little face is inches from mine, her breath warm on my cheek.

“Feels like there's steel plates in it?”

“Ceramic and nanofiber laminate, but yeah. No, across there. Tight. That's better.”

I fumble for the sling of my rifle.

“Leela, have you worked out how to get us straight yet?”

“About now, you two look pretty straight already… Never mind. No can do. We're just spinning on the tow cable like it's a giant space station arm, and they've got us around the midsection. No matter how I fire the thrusters, we're just going to swing back sideways.”

“Great. Guess I'm fighting like this, then. At least the gravity's pretty low.”

“Marcus,” Miranda breathes, almost whispers, still hanging onto one shoulder strap lest we slide apart, “how are we going to beat them? I mean, there's like seven of them at least, aren't there? This isn't…”

“An action movie? Yeah, I know.”

“Have you ever even done this before?”

“Yeah.”

I don't mention that “done this before” means “assuming VR counts.” Or zero-g contests against asteroid crew guys with paint marker rounds.

“Look,” I say, “I know the odds are shit, it is what it is. I don't think we can surrender. They weren't exactly the talkative negotiating types on the radio, and that's before we killed a metric fuckton of their best friends and shipmates. So unless you got a better idea…”

“I don't suppose now would be a good time to mention that two Ares Elite model 5000N Personal Protection Drones would be really useful in this situation?”

She gives me a sad little smile, like for once, she doesn't want to fight. Gods, she's beautiful. Those eyes…

I must be slightly giddy. Maybe it's cause we're about to die.

“Yeah, we shoulda spent a little less time and effort trying to kill each other. But that's a regret, not a plan.”

“Is there time to rig some of those mining charges you mentioned?”

Oooh. Clever girl.

“Good thought, but no. They're strong enough to tear a hole in the hull. I'd have to cut them down, and there's no time. I'm going to have to just try to win this one the old fashioned way.”

She gives me a look, a long searching look that says… I don't know what it says. I haven't a clue. I can't read this girl at all. I only know she's pondering… something.

“We,” she says.

“What?”

“We. We are going to try to win this one the old fashioned way. Give me that pistol.”

She's holding a hand out. It's steady as a docking anchor, and she's staring me right in the eye. Funny, I can tell now when her pupils are dilated. The size of her eyes used to throw me off.

She's nuts. And incredibly brave. And did I mention nuts?

“Prin… Miranda, that's… ah… I appreciate the gesture, but you're being silly. Have you ever even fired a gun before?”

“No. I'll figure it out. What do you expect me to do, hide?”

“Yes.”

“That's not going to happen, Marcus. My life is on the line, here, too. I don't think these guys are going to play nice with me either, just because I'm a girl. I know you think I'm a spoiled brat, but I'm that doesn't mean I'm just going to—”

“No. Not happening. No way.”

“Oh, come on,” she sighs, exasperated. “Really?”

She cocks her head to one side and peers at me.

“It was true, what you said, then, wasn't it?” she asks. “You really don't trust me. After all we've been through, you really don't. What is it you think I'm going to do? Shoot you in the back? Screw up and get us both killed?”

I don't quite know how to answer. I'm not sure that's it at all… do I trust her? I'd have to be insane. I've seen what she's capable of. But other times she seems almost… sweet. And I don't know how to predict it.

“We don't have much time. They're coming. How can I get you to trust me for once? Oh, hell. Look, give me your hands.”

“What?” What is she getting at?

“C'mon, just humor me. I'm trying to make a point here,” she says, plucking at my forearms. She clearly can't lift them unless I let her, so I do… though I don't know where she is going with this.

Carefully, pausing only briefly to untangle us from my rifle sling, she raises both my hands to her face. No, not to her face. Slightly lower.

To her throat.

“Miranda? What are you doing?”

“Just…play along, okay? Please. I want to show you something. Put your hands around my neck.”

I don't want to. Or maybe I do, but I'm afraid to. Afraid of what I did last time. Afraid of how I still want power over her, which means I'm still afraid… of her. Of how she ties my brain in knots. Of how I'm never sure what she's thinking. I don't know.

I just freeze. For a moment. Looking at her.

But the tilt of her mouth says “stop it already,” and her eyes say “it's okay, really”… and so I do as she asks. Her skin is small and soft and warm under my fingers, and she lays both hands on my forearms, and gives them a gentle squeeze.

“You're really strong,” she says, “You could snap my neck like a twig right now.”

What the hell? Is she trying to make me feel guilty about what I did? If she is, it's kinda working. But I'm not going to tell her that.

“Miranda… you're doing that thing again. The thing where you just start doing crazy stuff and never explain it. Are you going to start tearing your clothes off? Or something equally weird?”

“No, shhh…. relax. I'm trying to make a point. A lot of the stuff you said to me the other day was right, but you were wrong about one thing. You said we couldn't trust each other, but that's not right. It's not each other. It's just you. That's what I'm trying to show you. I can't prove to you that you can trust me.

“But I can prove to you that I trust you.”

She tilts her head back, and lifts her chin, exposing her slender white throat even more. Almost instinctively, I want to pull back… it's too raw, too intimate, it feels… wrong. Like something I shouldn't like.

Her eyes are closed. I feel… shaky.

“You could hurt me right now,” she whispers. “You could hurt me really badly. There wouldn't be a thing I could do to stop you. But I don't need to stop you. Because I know you wouldn't. I've known since you came back for me. You risked your life for mine. Did you think I didn't notice?

“I feel safe like this now, okay? Your hands are… really warm. It's actually… kinda nice.”

Using vulnerability as a weapon. Wow. That's slick. I can't decide if she's sincere, or the most talented evil manipulative liar in the worlds. Is this the real Miranda, or another mask?

Her face looks so… calm. But if she feels as safe as she says, why can I feel her pulse in her throat, fluttering like a trapped bird?

“Ah… okay, Pixie. This is still kinda weird. I mean, I get what you're trying to say. It's not totally insane. For once.

“But it's not just about what you would do. It's about what you can do. You never learned to shoot, you have no idea how to use cover, I don't have a set of spare armor, and it wouldn't fit you if I did. You'd just get killed, and trying to stop that would actually make my job harder. Believe me, I love to see you willing to risk your own neck of other people's for once in your life, but you can't do this.”

“Yeah, well, maybe there are some things women can do that men can't.”

Oh, for fuck's sake.

“Now is not the time for a girl power moment, Miranda.”

Her eyes go wide, distant and kind of hurt. Her hands tighten on my forearms, and I realize that I'm still holding her around the neck. I remove them quickly.

“Listen, you impossibly thick, knuckle-dragging ape-creature, I'm not trying to prove I'm tough. I've been in exactly one fight in my life, and you saw how that went for me.

“I'm saying I have a plan. And I'm not happy about that, because you have no clue, not one, just how degrading this is going to be, but it's all I've got. So are you going to waste more time arguing… or you going to shut your stubborn mouth and actually listen?”

I open my mouth to say… I don't know… something, but suddenly, I'm weightless, and the hull resonates with a monstrous creaking of the tow cable going slack. Then the wall slaps up against my back armor plate, and Miranda slaps up against the front one, and Leela's voice sings out…

“Hey, guys, gravity's gonna be a little wonky for a bit. Got a couple of them on the hull now, so I'm try to shake them off or at least if I can slow them down. Hold on tight.”

Except there's not much to hold onto except we each other. We bounce around the room, reaching out with legs and arms to fend off walls, ceilings, overhead lockers, light fixtures. Miranda wraps her arms around me, grips my vest by the drag straps, pinning the rifle between us.

Finally, we settle back to the floor—well, the wall—with a bump and cacophony of metallic creaking and groaning from outside the hull.

“That didn't work so well.” says Leela. “There's still three of them at the far airlock, or at least there were thirty seconds ago, when they shot out the camera. They'll start cutting in any moment if they haven't already. And I'll bet the others are circling back.”

“Thanks, Leela. We'll be quick. Okay, Miranda,” I say, with a sigh, “explain it to me in ape-creature speak. What's your plan?”

And so she tells me.

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“But I thought you hated to be—”

“I do. So what?”

“Think you can make it work?”

“Just watch me.”

“Okay. But if we're going to do this, you follow my lead. If I croak frog, you jump, without stopping to ask how high. Stet?”

“Okay, yes, stet. You're in charge. Now can we—”

I reach back and, with a sound of tearing velcro, I detach my holster, and offer her the handgun.

They're cutting through the airlock. A waterfall of glowing sparks drifts down from the door handle. With the White Cat tipped partially sideways, swung like a pendulum on the end of the tow cable, the observation deck airlock is tipped on its side, midway up the curve of what used to be the wall, halfway up the circle.

In any real gravity, this would be a problem. That curved slope would be unclimbable, and stepping out of the lock would mean a serious fall. But the White Cat's mutual spin with Tuf Voyaging is slow, almost a drift, and not only do the breachers have a panoramic view of the tipped observation deck, they have an overwatch firing position they can sweep the room from, then drift down at leisure.

So much for ambushing them when they emerge. We'd be fish in a barrel, with fire coming from an elevated angle, no way to get a shot without exposing ourselves.

And with their friends no doubt coming through the cargo bay, and an entire ad-hoc fleet coming in fast, there's no time to wait them out. Others will be coming.

The sparks stop falling—they're through. There's no rush of escaping air. They must have sealed the outer lock door. They must not mean to evacuate the ship just yet. Better keep our suits sealed for now, though.

For a moment, I hope they'll be stupid, and just come straight out, give me a shot at them, but no such luck. I don't even see muzzles poking out of the airlock.

“Don't see anyone,” says a voice like a handful of gravel thrown on a coffin lid. “Maybe a lot of 'em were hurt when the whole thing went sideways.”

“Can't count on it. We're gonna have to clear the whole ship, deck by deck. Shoot anyone who isn't the girl. Fan out.”

That's when Miranda speaks up. “Stop!” she yells. “Wait! Don't shoot! I surrender!”

There's a note of panic in her voice, high-pitched even for her. Frightened, she sounds like a little girl.

The first voice answers. “All right, throw out your weapon and raise both hands above your head, then come out slowly.”

“Please! I don't have any weapons.” She squeaks, raising both hands above the gear locker she was hiding behind, down at the lowest point of what used to be the wall of diamond laminate windows, and is now a sort of floor.

The pistol I gave her is tucked well out of sight between the skin-tight fiber of her vacsuit, and the life support pack with its tanks and instrumentation gear. She rises slowly, her arms stretched high, giving whoever it is in that airlock a good, long look at the nanofabric hugging the curves of her body.

“Okay, stand right the fuck there. Do not move.”

“Okay, okay, just please, please, don't hurt me!”

A rifle barrel emerges from the entrance to the lock, followed by a tall, slender Belter form wearing some kind of tac gear, dark-haired guy with a thin rodent face like a weasel. He's half-stumbling, half-sliding down that curved wall.

I'm watching for his barrel to dip, watching for more muzzles. Please let these guys be as stupid as Miranda thinks they are.

Yes, there's a second barrel, and a third, followed by two more bodies, a big, heavyset dude with a shaved head, and another one with a nose like a beak. The last one's openly leering, a stereotype of a goon. Fucking carrion eater.

They can't be professionals. Different gear on each man, no discipline, no caution. Just some crew who happened to be out here. They're pretty fucking scruffy-looking to be tooling around in a fusion drive ship, but I don't have time to wonder. I can't let them get too close to her.

“Who else is aboard?” asks the bald one. His voice matches the one giving orders. Maybe he's the one in charge?

“Just the pilot and a couple of technicians! We don't have any weapons!”

Miranda's good at lying. Who woulda guessed?

“Where are they?”

“The bridge, I think! Or hiding somewhere. I don't know!”

“Okay, calm down. Sardo, take her into… ah… custody. Hit her if she makes any moves.”

“Sure, boss,” gloats bird-beak. Vulture. “Wouldn't mind hittin' that.”

“Fun later,” Cueball snarls. “We get the fuckin' ship secure first.”

Yeah, pal. Keep talking, keep walking, keep thinking with your tiny little shrimp dick. Just a little bit more…

I notice Miranda's face is carefully, very carefully, still. Showing nothing but wide-eyed fear. It's only because I've studied that face for weeks, screamed at it, locked eyes with it, seen it in my dreams, that I notice the little muscle twitching in her jaw.

Weasel is eyeing her up and down, too, now. Grins all around, like they smell fear. Like they're into that. Like they're excited by it. Not Cueball, though. He's just cold, all business. Doesn't care. Doesn't mean he wouldn't. He just wouldn't care how she felt about it. No sadism. No glee.

She's just a piece of meat to him.

“Cover that ladder,” he says, to Weasel, who stops grinning and drops to one knee, pointing his weapon at the entrance to the access shaft that runs the length of the ship, the obvious place for anyone to come in who wants to crash the party.

That's why I'm not there.

“Okay, we have the girl,” Cueball says… to no one in particular, talking into some sort of com pickup I can't see. “Anyone else you find in here is kill-on-sight. Let's get this over with.”

“No! Please! No! They're just… they work for me!”

Miranda's playing this role to the hilt, and Cueball, just reacts, letting his rifle hang on the sling, stepping forward with a hand raised, maybe to hit her. I don't know. What I do know is that right now no weapons are pointed anywhere near her, or me, or anywhere that actually matters.

And that's when Miranda drops to the “floor,” just splatters herself prone.

Gives me a clear shot.

Those lowered weapons, that clear shot are the whole point, here. They are all I needed. I pull my face away from the gap in the door of the storage compartment, high up what is now the wall, the door I've been holding almost-closed. The carbine is wedged in front of me, and there's no way to come out without slamming metal on metal, but I don't care about noise now.

I'm committed to the plan. Speed is life.

And I'm out, half leaping and half falling, down towards the three, caught in the moment of swaggering forward, eager to put their grubby hands on their prize, like slugs on a rose, caught with their faces between sneering, gloating anticipation, and the very beginnings of shocked dismay.

They didn't think to look up. No one ever thinks to look up.

The carbine optic is jacked into my cybernetic eye, projecting a virtual targeting beam across my field of vision. I don't need to get it all the way to my eye, I just push the muzzle out, get a good cheek weld, and the targeting beam crosses Weasel's chest, as I press the trigger twice, three times, quick as I can.

It's a damn good thing I've had the standard eardrum replacement that vacuum workers get— out of a short barrel, in an enclosed space, the 6.8mm caseless Special Purpose Round is loud. Weasel doesn't pitch backward or even forward, I can't see any blood, but he sags and crumples, straight down, and I'm not waiting for him to hit the floor before I'm centering on my second target. Vulture.

That's one.

Damn. He's wearing plates—a spray of ceramic-laminate shards sprays out from this chest, like it's in slow motion. His beady little eyes fix on me, not even registering the pain, and he's bringing up that bullpup shotgun. I don't wait to soak the recoil and bring the muzzle back down, I just squeeze the trigger the moment it resets. Hammer pair.

Impact. A crimson arterial spray jets from his throat, flies in a low-gravity arc as he twists, still trying to bring his weapon to bear, unaware that he's a dead man.

That's two.

That wild fire is still dangerous, but there's nothing I can do about it… I have Cueball to deal with, and the floor is coming up to meet me, in slow motion, but massive and picking up speed.

I try to find Cueball with the muzzle before I hit the deck, but it's too late… I just have to roll and let my chest plate take the impact, get my finger clear of the trigger guard and up on the frame so I don't let a round off somewhere random…

… Pain. Not in my chest but in one knee as it impacts, first, then my mouth as an incisor snags a bit of my tongue. Blood tastes like copper.

I don't transition into a smooth, acrobatic dive roll, and come up shooting, action hero style. I've face-planted on the deck with an undignified splat, but only moments have passed, and I'm still in this fight.

Roll over. Get on my back. Try to sort the tumbling chaos of the world, find Cueball, hit him before he shakes off whatever residual shock Miranda's ruse and my sudden appearance has bought us.

Where is he?

There.

Too late.

Right below his shorn scalp, his focused eyes, the grin on the big square jaw, is a foreshortened muzzle, and I'm staring down the small dark hole at the end.

And Godzilla punches me in the chest as the back face of my ceramic plate deforms under multiple round strikes. I've been punched in training by ranked amateur boxers, hit with a chair once in a rowdy Belter nightclub on Ganymede, took a stray rock in my faceplate when someone packed a splitting charge too tight. This is worse.

Air leaves my lungs in a rush. I hope my ribs are intact… no way to tell.

I'm gasping, trying to pull air with a diaphragm that's reeling in shock, trying to scoot away behind whatever cover I can find, away from the next impact that I know is coming, the one that will break the weakened plate, shatter my ribs, shred my lungs.

Hold on.

His gunshots weren't a series of sharp cracks, but an extended whoop… fully automatic, caseless, with a lightened bolt carrier running the fire rate as fast as it can go.

The idiot is actually holding down the trigger and spraying. He's walked a burst across my armored chest, and right up the wall. I have a moment or two while he's trying get control again.

And I use it jam the stock against my ruined chest plate, no sight picture, no cheek weld, just center the targeting beam and slap the trigger over and over again, not even a smooth press, but it's enough.

Cueball's grin vanishes along with his jaw and most of his lower face, and he's thrashing with a high pitched keening sound like nothing human, spraying rounds across deckplates, bulkheads, furniture, for just a moment before the magazine runs dry. Shredded foam padding catapults into the air, and turns pink in the flying droplets of Vulture's blood. Cueball's bleeding into the cabin, too, flailing and screeching, and it's getting hard to see with all this mess flying around… nothing settles quickly in low gravity.

I'm still trying to suck back air into my lungs when there's another gunshot.

Where did that…

Oh. It's Miranda. She's stepped over a fallen body, through the blizzard of trash, and put a single bullet in Cueball's head. She's not even holding the pistol right, just one-handing it at full extension, but at less than two meters she could hardly have missed. Blood and what looks like brains are spattered over the handgun and her vacsuit, but she doesn't flinch, just takes another step to where Vulture is kneeling trying to put pressure on his throat, and just plugs him, execution style, no flinch or hesitation at all.

Cold blooded. No… wait. Not cold. Surgeon. She's already seen a lot of blood. She's hardened to this.

But maybe cold, too, I reflect as I clamber to my feet, holding onto a deck chair, lungs working again. She just kicked Vulture's body. I don't think she liked those remarks about “hitting that” too much.

I'm loosening my plate carrier when she turns towards me, mopping blood from her faceplate.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, just took a pretty good hit on the armor there. Here, help me get this off… plate's wrecked.”

She steps forward.

“Hey, hey, hey, careful! Finger off the trigger unless you're looking down the sights. And watch your muzzle! Trigger's a lot lighter after the first shot.”

She lowers the pistol carefully, and helps me, one-handed, with the velcro straps. My chest must be a mass of bruises, but it's worlds better once the crumpled backface of the plate isn't pressing on it.

“Here,” I say to her, “take this. The back plate's still good. Get in a corner, hunker down, hold it over you like a shield, and shoot anyone who comes in view. I'm gonna try to deal with the others.”

I look for an earpiece on the one intact head - Weasel's - but no such luck. They must be using neural lace for comms. No chance of me listening in. And the rest will know their comrades are dead now.

“Hey!”

Miranda's looking at me, through a faceplate smeared with blood, with a sort of combination of grin and expectant pout. She's shaking her head a bit, like she's trying to clear it. Her ears are probably ringing something fierce.

“What?”

“You're welcome!”

“I'm… what?”

“I told you it would work!”

Oh. She's gloating. We're floating dead in space, there's more armed goons wandering the ship, gods alone know where or how many, and she wants a pat on the head because her plan worked. So much for 'this will be really degrading and I don't want to do it'.

“Yes, good job. Now get down and don't do anything stupid, just stay alive.”

“But I can—”

“NOW!”

She hunkers down into her shoulders and gives me a sheepish little smile.

“Yessir.”

I can't tell if she being sarcastic or not, but she wedges herself into a corner between a bulkhead and a row of chairs, pausing only to retrieve the Weasel's unfired MP70. Good thought.

I pull my magazine, check it. Light, but not empty. I stow it, replace it with a fresh one.

I know the smart thing to do would be start sealing doors, find a choke point, barricade it and play defense—use that fatal funnel to my advantage. But I can't afford to wait. They have numbers, and secure communications, and all the time in the world. Better to move quick, keep the momentum going, use the homefield advantage. They don't necessarily know there's only two of us.

I still don't like these odds.