Bitter Angels (43 page)

Meek jerked his chin for his crew to follow him, and they all filed through the narrow opening in the patched-together partition.

“You,” said the Clerk.

Vijay stopped. “What?” he asked.

The Clerk peered up at him. She had green eyes and golden skin.

“She one of the Marshal-Steward’s cousins?” muttered Took from the back of Vijay’s mind.

“You are identified as Edison Ray, registered and attached to the Pax Solaris.”

“Yeah?” Meek was eyeing him. He had to make it good. “I’m on loan for humanitarian purposes. We’ve got a load of water to shift.” Vijay flexed his arms. Around him, the crew grinned.

The Clerk did not even seem to see. “I have no authority for your addition to this work crew.”

Vijay stuck his hand in his pants pocket and pulled out the faked manifest Meek had entrusted him with. “Right here, along with the cargo.” He stabbed his finger at the appropriate line. “ ‘One port assistant.’ That’s me.”

The Clerk took the manifest and stared at it. Her eyes did not move back and forth like a person reading. She just stared.

And she blinked. “There is no specific identification code given.”

Vijay groaned, but the other strongarms remained silent. Not only that, but they were starting to edge away from him.

Meek was the only one who moved in closer. “Is there a problem?”

The Clerk lifted her blank, unseeing eyes toward him. “I am uncertain.” She tilted her face down toward the manifest again. Vijay’s heart skipped a beat.

“Keep up the act, Vijay. You’re just another bored bastard. Come on. No slips.”

Vijay folded his arms and glowered at the Clerk. She brushed her fingers across the manifest one more time.

“Thank you, Seña.” Meek bowed but gave Vijay a sour look as he did. Vijay shrugged and stuffed his hands in his pockets and tried to shoot a companionable eye roll to his fellow strongarms.

Not one of them showed the least sign of being on his side.

“Just walk, Vijay.”

A partition blocked off one of the loading elevators. Most of the space behind it was taken up by battered steel cylinders, about the size of a man’s torso. They were piled there without any order, as if they had been hastily unloaded and left.

“All right,” said Meek. “We need to get these”—he stabbed his finger at the canisters—“onto these”—he stabbed at a pile of empty cargo pallets—“and into there.” The final stab was to the open doors of the air lock and the cargo elevator beyond. “Questions?”

No one said anything. Meek nodded. “Then go. And Papa Dare will be coming ’round to check the work, so I suggest you all get busy.”

Vijay looked at the strongarms and they looked at him. Two peeled off and headed for the pallets. Each man pulled one off the stack and tossed it onto the port-yard stone with a rattle and a thud. The third stationed himself next to the canisters, and Vijay walked into place beside him, yanking his gloves out of his back pocket as he did.

“What’er those?” asked the wank next to the canisters.

“They’re called gloves,” grunted Vijay as he pulled them on. “I could spell that for you, if you could read.”

“Shut your hole,” snapped Meek. “And get with the job.”

The wank shut it, but the look he gave Vijay said they were not done with this little exchange of pleasantries. He grabbed up a canister and tossed it to Vijay. It landed awkwardly in his hands, and the contents sloshed hard.

“And here’s one,” remarked Took as Vijay heaved the can to the next man on the line.

Almost anywhere else, this would have been done by machines: forklifts, pallet handlers, driven by humans or remote control. On Dazzle, however, working machinery was rare, and expensive. People, on the other hand, were cheap, plentiful, and easily replaced if they failed to perform. Papa Dare believed in keeping his overhead low.

Vijay felt Meek and the Clerk watching him, but he had to keep his attention on the cargo, which the wank was heaving over as fast as he could.

The real problem with the dependence on human labor was that the more people you needed for a job, the more people you must let near your secrets.

Like whatever was really sloshing around in the canisters.

The gloves on Vijay’s hands were special, battered-looking versions of his uniform gloves. They were armored. They had a communication pad and a camera. They also had tiny scanning spectrometers in them. It was, after all, a very useful thing for a spy to be able to find out what was inside a box (or an envelope, or a can) without having to open it.

In fact, they were starting to hurt like hell.

“Just gotta get this one answer,” said Took.

“Wassamatter, Little Saint?” laughed the Big Wank. “Maybe I should come over and kiss dat widdle fingee for ’oo.”

“Maybe you should suck my big dickee for me,” muttered Vijay. He would have said it louder, but Meek was eye-balling him, and now was not the time.

They filled one pallet. They filled two, three, four. Vijay lost count. It was too hot in the yard, and the burn on his hands did not let up. The scanners had to get through the metal. They had to cross-check and verify the findings. That took a lot of internal processing, and internal processing generated heat, as did the scans themselves.

A dozen pallets. Two.

“Hang on, Vijay,” said Took from the back of his mind.

“Experience is a bitch.”

Three dozen pallets.

“Right here, Vijay.”

“It’s the weight and the motion. And in case you hadn’t noticed the Big Wank there has been trying to make you miss for the last hundred throws.”

“Not yet. I’ll warn you if you get there.”

“Anytime.”

It took another hour, but at last, the final canister was strapped onto the final pallet. Vijay stripped off his gloves. Took, of course, was right. His hands were red, and they hurt like he’d been sunburned, but there was no obvious sign of the burning he’d felt.

There was, however, a faint readout on the palm of the right glove. Over by the ship, the toughs and the wanks slapped each other on the back and eyed Meek, who was tugging on pallet straps and looking for all the world like a genuine straw boss. Vijay smoothed out the glove, and glanced down to see what he’d been loading for the past three hours.

H2O.

Vijay wiped his forehead and glanced up to make sure no one was paying any attention to him. He looked at the glove again.

H2O.

A few trace chemicals—a little more salt than there should be—but no poison, no manufactured nanos. Habitat 3 was being stuffed to the gills with cans of water.

And Meek had even told him so. A floating ocean, he’d said.

Vijay stared, and the slick, sick sensation of failure slid across his skin.

“We’ve seen our share of those.”

“Preferably without your having to ask Terese to declare her unfit.”

“Can’t stand here, Vijay,” said Took urgently. “Got to get this word home.”

Vijay was absolutely unsurprised it was his friend and colleague the Big Wank who shouted, “Where you going, Little Saint?”

Vijay jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Gotta take a leak.”

“Use the corner if you can’t wait for launch,” called Meek from his station by the pallets. “Nobody gets out of sight. Papa Dare’s personal orders.”

“Awww, come on!” Vijay threw up his hands. “I didn’t sign up for this to turn into a pig,” he said directly to the Big Wank, who did not miss it.

“You calling me a pig?” Big Wank straightened up. Which showed he had some kind of balls. Vijay had at least six inches on the guy and probably seventy-five pounds.

But the Big Wank had friends, and two of the other strongarms slouched into place behind him, their menacing eyes fastened on Vijay.

Wank swung straight for his throat, but Vijay was ready for it. He got his arm up in time to block the blow and drove his other fist hard into the Wank’s solar plexus. Wank doubled over with a satisfying grunt, and Vijay kicked his ankles out from under him, laying him out on the stone.

“What the
fuckless
are you doing!” bellowed Meek, and Vijay took off running.

He stretched his long legs for all they were worth. In the light gravity and open space he practically flew. He forgot his pain, almost forgot he had four bad-ass, angry strong-arms on his tail, and just ran.

“Whoooo-hooo!” shouted Took for him.

“Get that gate shut!” bellowed Meek. “He’s robbing me!”

A shot whizzed past Vijay’s head. The secops were hauling the gate closed. Another shot went off, and the gate stopped moving.

“What the hells!” shouted one of the secops. He yanked at the bars, but the gate didn’t move. Vijay grabbed the secop by the shoulders and tossed him backward, right into Wank’s little mob.

Vijay flew through the gate just in time to see Siri swing herself over the balcony and drop down onto the bridge underneath.

“Saving your ass.”

She had her gun on her back, and now he knew what held the gate open for him.

“She always was a
wicked
good shot.”

“Run now. Think later.”

Pumped full of hope and adrenaline, Vijay darted into the warrenlike building and tore down the corridor, following Siri to the back stairs.

Siri crouched in the blackness of the unused subway tunnel.

She hadn’t meant to save the construct. She’d just meant to shadow it and find a place where she could meet it, like she would have done if it really had been Vijay, then work out a way to lure it down here.

But this was even better than she had planned. This way, it followed her without asking any questions.

Just like Vijay would have done. Siri swallowed around the lump in her throat.

A shadow blocked the entranceway above. Siri lifted her head. The construct didn’t bother with the stairs. It hung over the rail and dropped, landing lightly on his toes.

“You can’t talk to it, Siri. You can’t give it a chance to get to you.”

The construct looked around, but she was hidden in the darkness of the tunnel mouth and its eyes hadn’t adjusted yet. It moved out of the light, into the space under the stairs, putting its back against the wall.

Siri drew a bead on the construct and fired. The epoxy hit it square on the left shoulder, jerking it backward and sealing it to the wall.

“What the hell!” it cried out. Her second shot got its right hand before it could twist out of the way. One more shot, and its boots were sealed to the floor.