Dragonfly (14 page)

I was impressed. He’d done his research. Still, it made me grimace inside that he knew the girl’s name. Kidnappers are supposed to objectify. It’s one of the first things they teach you in hostage negotiation: make the hostages people, not objects. But Spider knew who this girl was. He just didn’t care.

Dragonfly tapped his nails on the glass, thoughtful, green lines reflecting in his eyes. “Doors?”

“Magclamped. The girl has a codecard, so does her father. Everyone else has to ping for authorization, marines included.”

“So we can’t just roll them for it.”

Spider snorted. “Think I’d need you if we could?”

“Where’s the override?”

“That area’s controlled from the garrison. Security, lights, life support, everything. It’s quarantined from the rest of the station.”

I nodded. The console I’d looked at had only covered security for its surrounding area too. “So how—”

“Lights,” interrupted Dragonfly. “What kind?”

Spider scratched his nose, thinking. “Ice, I guess … No. Conduits in the ceiling. Atomglow.”

“You sure?”

“Of course.”

I tried again. “So how are we leaving? Where’s your ship?”

“Docking arm five, directly above her quarters. Ninety-five seconds, a hundred tops.”

Dragonfly flicked him a dark glare. “Tell me you’ve got it sorted once we get inside. If this Natasha claws my eyes out, I’ll blame you.”

“Let me worry about clawed eyeballs.”

“Was afraid you’d say that.” Dragonfly considered. “So. Not only do we have to hack a security system that’s surrounded by a company of marines, and break open a magclamped septurium door past three armed guards who don’t have an entry code—do stop me any time if I’m wrong—”

“All good so far.”

“—we also have to get an eye-clawing admiral’s daughter out and off the station in forty-three seconds, in a ship that’s nearly two minutes away.”

“Yeah.” Spider shrugged. “Sounds about right.”

“Terrific,” I said. “No problem then.”

I wrinkled my nose, thinking hard. Maybe if we started a fight, created a diversion somehow … Still. Not easy to distract a whole company.

But Dragonfly just tucked his hair behind his ears and sniffed. “Don’t suppose you’ve got some gammaspace shades and a smoke grenade?”

An attractive Spider grin, shades of that personality cult showing. “Your wish is my ‘hell, yeah’.”

Dragonfly stood, dusting his hands clean. “Doesn’t sound that hard to me. Let’s go.”

16

I strutted up to the garrison’s front desk, my glossy black marine officer’s uniform tight and smooth around my body. It felt strange to be back in uniform. The tight diagonal clips across the front pushed my breasts up, the firm high collar making me lift my chin. My hair was braided tightly under my cap, and the pins itched. I hadn’t asked where Spider found the uniform. Better not to know. The one-piece was a bit big around the butt, but with my shorts on underneath—stripping off in Spider’s seedy hotel room? Not an option—it fit okay. And the boots made me taller. It was nice to be tall.

Besides, I was the only one among us who could pass for military. Dreadlocks weren’t exactly marine regulation, Foxy and the other kid were both too skinny or too insane, and the look I got when I suggested Dragonfly cut his hair could have melted ultraglass. Vanity. Who knew?

I halted in front of the desk sergeant, my breath tight. Dragonfly slouched beside me, bleary-eyed, his hair tousled like I’d dragged him out of bed. He wore a dusty grey coverall, and carried an armful of tangled techie tools, with wire and a welder and a pair of brass synapse colliders sticking out.

The young sergeant popped me a crisp salute. “Ma’am.”

“Sergeant.” My best ultra-Russiyan tone, clipped and efficient. “Major Kovalova, admiral’s aide. Emergency repairs to climate control. Security grid access, please.”

I flipped him my fake marine ident, trying to stay casual. Another Dragonfly creation, cooked up with Spider’s rusty copykit. It even had my picture etched into the glass, just a still. I’d ignored Spider’s gleeful suggestion that we make our own porn film while we had the lasercam out.

The sergeant glanced at it with swift blue eyes. “Ma’am, yes, ma’am. It’s zero-four-fifteen. This isn’t routine, ma’am?”

“I did say emergency.”

“Ma’am, I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to call for authorization, ma’am.”

He reached for his etherwave contact. Trust us to find the only efficacious Imperial soldier on the station.

I slapped my palm on the desk, impatient. “Look, sergeant, I commend your enthusiasm for regulations, but Miss Verenskaya called my direct line. The aircon’s unserviceable in her apartment. She’s freezing in there, and I think the scrubbers are malfunctioning. We don’t have all night. You want to wake the admiral at zero-four-bloody-early to tell him you won’t fix his daughter’s airflow? Be my guest.”

He hesitated, and I offered a tight Russiyan smile and leaned closer. “The admiral made Miss Verenskaya’s comfort my responsibility. I’d like to resolve this quickly and quietly. You’d be doing me a personal favor, sergeant. I won’t forget it.”

He bit his lip and kept his gaze down. I did look good in uniform. “Ma’am. Who’s the techgrub, ma’am?”

Dragonfly fidgeted, and I snickered inwardly. “The best I could find at 4 a.m., sergeant. Don’t worry, I’ll keep him on a tight leash.”

At last, he cracked a smile. “Ma’am. Glad to be of service, ma’am.”

He slid two fingers over the door control, lifting the metal security shield with an electromagnetic hiss, and we were in.

As the shield grated downwards and clunked tightly into the floor behind us, Dragonfly whispered, “If that kid says ‘ma’am’ one more time, I’ll hit him. You liked that, didn’t you?”

“It’s no more than I deserve.” Still, my pulse quickened. Had I been too convincing as a marine? Lazuli was a good actress, but …

He leaned closer. “Can’t blame him. You’re sexy in uniform. I’m intimidated.”

His gaze caressed my prominent chest and slipped lower. I tried not to notice the way my body reacted, my nipples tightening as though I were naked. It was just proximity and danger, the fight-or-fuck reflex. He’d be more than intimidated if I showed him my real rank. “Eyes on the job, techgrub.”

“Oh, they are.”

I flushed and didn’t reply. The way he flirted at inappropriate moments reminded me of Nikita. Except Nikita did it to test me, to put me off my guard when we were in danger, because he liked having the upper hand. Dragonfly … well, he seemed to do it for fun. Like he meant it.

My fingers curled tight. He was a good liar. But so was I.

The consoles we needed lay along a short atom-lit corridor, the little orange globes glowing steadily. All seemed quiet, the majority of the marines on their rest shift.

I nudged him as we hurried along. “So why’d you change your mind?”

“About what?”

“Playing Spider’s little game.”

He glanced at me, inscrutable once more. “Should I have let him shoot you?”

“You don’t know me.”

He laughed, like I’d said something funny. “All the more reason. Yes, I’ve done my time as Lukas’s conscience, and no, I don’t want to sign up again. Doesn’t mean it’s worth a life.”

Very convincing. He probably practiced those lies in front of a mirror.

I tried another angle. “So why am I really here?”

“Told you. Backup.”

“You don’t trust me, you mean.”

“If I tricked my way onto your ship and kept asking too many questions, would you trust me?”

I snorted, and kept silent. But his sharp insight made my spine tingle. He’d been thinking about me then. About Lazuli, I corrected. About who she was, why she was with him, what she could possibly want. That was good. And he didn’t seem fazed by how easily she’d slipped into Major Kovalova’s skin, either. He was starting to think well of her. Even better.

We passed another soldier, and she and I exchanged salutes. The movement felt strange and natural at the same time, and nostalgia twinged my nerves. Military life was so simple. Orders to follow, schedules to meet, someone to tell you what to do. I missed that. At the same time, the idea of returning to it chafed at me. At Axis, you’re allowed to use your brain, even if the chances of getting it blown out are high.

And this life of Dragonfly’s was the same: fast, smart, on the edge. Counter-insurrection’s warped reflection. Same tricks, different side, only the danger was greater because the enemy were everywhere. It excited me, like my job at Axis used to excite me before Mishka died.

Pity for Dragonfly he didn’t have much of his life left.

The console room door had a glass eyescanner for entry. Dragonfly flipped out his golden hyperchip and slapped it against the scanner’s metal edge. A little magnet clicked. Green light flashed over the curved glass, scanning an imaginary retina, and the hyperchip glowed white, spoofing the data. A red diode flashed, and the door popped open.

I quirked an appreciative eyebrow. “Nice.”

He flashed a smile as he tucked the hyperchip into his pocket. “Isn’t it? Beats emergency eyeball surgery, anyway.”

“Is there anything that chip doesn’t do?”

“Sure. Wind back time. Let’s get on with it.”

We hurried inside and I shut the door. We didn’t have much time. Any moment, that helpful sergeant might decide he’d better call the admiral after all.

***

The narrow room was backlit with dim green spotlights to soothe the neural circuits, the air warm and damp. A bank of climate-control instruments lined one wall, the security console on the other: a flat, green-skinned neurospace panel with some old metal receptors and a cracked glass display. In the ceiling, the laser grid buzzed faintly, like the one on Esperanza except twenty years older, monitoring body temperature, movement, sound in the rooms below it, checking system-wide that all the doors were functioning, all the circuits lay unbroken, and no one was doing exactly what we were about to do. I could hear old contacts shorting out. Obviously they didn’t update their kit very often. Good for us. Bad for them.

I wiped my damp face. Dragonfly had already untangled his tool bundle and was fiddling with the console, the security overrides flashing encrypted gibberish on the screen as he wired the receptors together with stealthcoated synapses.

The counter-crypto analyst in me was impressed. Hotwiring with pseudo-organics: nice way to fool an old neuroconsole like this one at short notice, seeing as he hadn’t had time to re-code his hyperchip for the job. Crude, but effective, if your hands were steady enough.

“Where’d you learn to do that?”

“New Moskva Tech.”

“You’re kidding.”

He swiped a loose lock of hair behind his ear. “Of course I’m kidding. Look like Imperial curriculum to you?”

My curiosity itched. You didn’t learn hyperalgebra from pirate newscasts or terrorists’ bomb-making manuals. “So where did you graduate, then?”

A laugh. “Study, yes. Graduate, not exactly.”

“How come? Fail your exams?”

“Hardly.” He twisted the end of another fleshy synapse and eased it into a metal receptor slot partly overgrown with pale green skin. “I got in trouble too much. They said, how about you finish your research in the navy and get re-educated, you separatist scumbag? I said, no thanks. Magically, I lost my place. They don’t like troublemakers in their alumni.”

“Who?”

“Everyone.” A receptor zapped, sparks flashing, and he swore and ripped the burned synapse away. “Get me the atomglow potential, please.”

“Sorry, what?” I’d been too busy watching his fingers move. So gentle and precise, soothing the neurospace into submission. I’d seen him do the same on Esperanza. What would it feel like, that thoughtful caress?

He pointed at the climate-control panels behind him, his gaze fixed on his synapses. “Screen on the left is the energy distributor for life support. Find me the atomglow channels so I can cut the current. A little slow, aren’t you?”

Chastened, I popped the display on. Power grids and neuroplasma channels sprang into the air, projected in glowing green light. Space is dark, cold and empty, so a basic LSS has three functions: light, heat and air. Atomglow—it’s a controlled fusion reaction—is more efficient than a straight photonic system because it makes both heat and light, and it’s perfect for space stations because there’s lots of room for fuel, and there’s already plenty of radiation in space, so the byproducts don’t matter. Just put the heater vents in line before the air scrubbers and you can’t go wrong.

I fingered my way through the controls, lights flashing. “Atomglow channels? Are we gonna put the lights out?”

“Give the lady a prize. But we’ll cut the emergency power and the laser grid first. When they go out, they’ll stay out.”

Glowing figures scrolled over my fingers. “Wait a sec … got it. Uh … there’s a current differential here. The lights must already be turned down in the girl’s quarters. But they’re on in the corridor and at the guardposts.”

“Won’t wake her up then, will we?” He slotted his last synapse and bio-diodes flashed green. Now the console looked like an old etherwave exchange, connecting wires sprouting everywhere.

He scraped his hair back, sweating in the humidity. “Okay. Emergency power draining. Laser grid is checking … Oops, the junction is hotwired. Emergency power looks fine, nothing to see here. Let’s have a little radiation flood in the gammaspace band for later …” He finessed a contact, stroking the neurospace skin gently, his voice mild and melodic like he was lulling a child to sleep. “There we go. Lazuli, if you wouldn’t mind winding that atomglow current back a couple of dozen micros,
por favor.
”

I traced my finger along the glowing green power column, dragging it downwards. In the corner of the display, digits flickered, and the power column flashed orange.

“
Es perfecto
. Power’s dropping. Laser grid thinks it’s compensating …
un poco
mas,
thanks.”

He still thought in Espan. Interesting. I dialed it back another notch or two, into the red zone.