Inescapable (4 page)

Fox gave a
grunt as she washed shampoo from her red-orange hair in the
slow-falling water stream. ‘Ten hours’ flight time, most of that in
some gravity and luxury quarters with nothing to do but read. I had
all last night to acclimatise. It’s a wonder they ever get anything
done in this company.’

‘Lowered
gravity can result in a loss of coordination–’

‘I’m aware of
that, and it takes a lot longer than a day to accustom yourself to
the difference. I’m not fond of placebos. We’ll go meet Terri and
hopefully she can cheer me up.’

~~~

Teresa Martins, Terri
to her friends, took after her mother, a quite stunningly
beautiful, black woman who had been a gifted psychologist up until
the time of her death. Terri had golden-brown eyes, full lips, long
black hair and quite a lush figure on a slim frame. Her father had
contributed something to her genes since Terri was probably
brighter than her mother had been; Jackson Martins left most humans
standing in the dust when it came to brain power and his daughter
was happy to stand in his shade, though he insisted that she was
rapidly catching up with him in her chosen area of expertise, which
was artificial intelligence research.

That expertise
was why she was up on the Moon, trying to solve some problems in
one of MarTech’s most confidential projects, and the project was
probably why Fox detected a few worrying hints in her friend’s
pretty, smiling face as she walked up to the table in the hotel’s
restaurant.

‘Fox,’ Terri
said, ‘I’m
so
glad you got to come up here.’

Fox sat down
and checked over the menu Kit was displaying for her. ‘Yeah, you
look like you could use a break. Maybe we should hold off on the
trip to Jenner an extra day.’

Terri frowned.
‘I’m fine.’

‘You’re looking
tired, and worried.’ Fox located something light, an omelette, and
ordered that and coffee. Her stomach was not actually used to the
difference in gravity yet and maybe the coffee was not a good idea,
but… coffee.

‘I’m working my
ass off to make sure Yliaster actually functions as advertised.’
Sagging a little, Terri lifted her cup and sipped coffee through
perfectly pursed lips. ‘Okay, so I’m glad of the break.’

‘Yliaster?
That’s what you’re calling it?’

‘You’ll get the
full briefing soon. We don’t like talking about it away from
Jenner.’

‘Good. Now say
hello to Kit before she thinks you’ve forgotten her.’ Kit’s avatar
appeared beside the table, looking like a timid schoolgirl. The
process was, of course, more complicated than it seemed with Kit
instructing Fox’s comms implant to transmit the appropriate data
stream so that Terri’s implant could pick it up and display it. And
Fox was careful to keep her eyes on Terri rather than looking up at
Kit, because Kit could only see what Fox saw, despite where her
eyes appeared to be. Things were easier at home where Kit had
sensors in the apartment to work with.

‘Good morning,
Kit,’ Terri said, smiling at her creation.

‘Good morning,
Miss Martins. I hope you are not excessively stressed.’

‘I’ll cope. And
seeing the two of you is relieving the tension. We’ll do a little
meet-and-greet, spend an evening in the leisure district, and I’m
sure I’ll be recharged and ready for Jenner tomorrow.’

‘Oh, I’m sure,’
Fox said, nodding. Not that she really believed it.

~~~

MarTech’s presence in
Luna City was, basically, services only. There was a block of
offices in the first quadrant, the north-east quarter of the city,
among a lot of other offices. That handled technical queries for
MarTech products, took in units requiring replacement or repair,
and acted as a point of contact for sales staff.

Palladium had
five people there, and that was primarily to ensure that someone
was awake at all times, a policy which was under review since it
was, to date anyway, appearing to be overkill. Two facilities
people took care of the operation of the office, while three
security division personnel took care of security. Big surprise
there then. The most exciting thing they had ever had to do was
track down Sanderson Hunt’s contact earlier in the year after the
man, an intelligence agent attempting to steal company secrets, had
been murdered.

It took Fox two
hours to meet everyone, hear a potted history of the goings on
there, and determine that there was nothing much she really needed
to know in detail until she
really
needed to know about it.
By that time, Kit had finished making the arrangements Fox had
asked for.

‘Right,’ Fox
said, ‘since I can’t persuade you to take an extra day out of
Jenner, as your security advisor, I am making the decision to take
you for a spa trip to Tranquillity.’

Terri peered at
her friend, one eyebrow cocked. ‘As my security advisor?’

‘Of course.
Stressed executives make poor decisions. Poor decisions result in
security issues. We’re going to the spa.’ To Fox, it did not look
like Terri was going to put up much of a fight, but you could see
her trying to come up with an objection. Fox decided to cut that
off before it had a chance to start. ‘We’ll get naked and sit in a
steam room, maybe take a massage…’

‘You had me at
naked.’

‘Thought I
might have.’

~~~

It was not that they
had ever slept together and Fox was fairly sure that Terri knew it
was not going to happen at Tranquillity Spa either. If she were
honest, Fox was not even sure that Terri really wanted to go to bed
with her anymore, but there was that undercurrent of desire
floating along whenever there was an opportunity to express it.
Maybe it was just friendly teasing now.

It had started
when Fox had been the one to pull Terri out of a hostage situation
in Dallas. The terrorists had killed everyone else in the bunker
where MarTech Technologies was developing Yliaster at that time,
but they had kept the daughter of the company’s founder alive as
their bargaining chip. Fox had lost her entire team getting to
Terri and they had spent almost a day getting out of the bunker,
hiding, running, and fighting. Terri had, perhaps naturally,
developed a crush on her saviour. Or Fox thought of it as a crush,
and thought that it would be inappropriate to give in to it.

The idea that,
maybe, Terri was getting over her ‘crush’ was given a little extra
credence by the fact that she sat in the private sauna Fox had
booked and did not really seem to be too concerned. She
looked
, but she seemed quite content with that.

‘You know,’
Terri said, ‘you weren’t looking particularly happy before we got
here either. Not exactly stressed, but… a bit tense.’

Fox sighed.
‘I’m not sure how well this is sitting with me. Jackson’s saddled
me with this Chief Investigative Officer title and I’m running
around looking at businesses and organisation charts.’

‘And you like
to be doing things, not managing things.’

‘She does,’ Kit
said, appearing on the bench between the two of them to join the
conversation. ‘Did she tell you why she left home to join the
Army?’

‘UA attack
killed her friend, she wanted to do something about that kind of
thing, and her parents were not best pleased.’

The virtual
girl gave a sharp nod. ‘They prefer to talk rather than act. Fox
prefers to act rather than–’

‘I prefer to do
rather than sitting around talking about doing,’ Fox interrupted.
‘Sometimes the doing can be talking. I’d rather talk someone out of
doing something stupid than shoot them, but you can’t always have
what you want. Point is… Oh… One of Sam’s clients was killed
recently. An old guy, murdered in his home, probably knew his
attacker, but he was gay and the cop assigned to the case is a
homophobe. The case has been put on the inactive list because the
detective doesn’t
care
about who killed an old gay. When I
was with NAPA, I could have
done
something about that. I
could have kicked Brownlow and taken the case myself. I could have
got Sam some closure. Now I’m just… pushing papers for a
corporation.’

Terri’s brow
furrowed and she pressed her lips together. ‘Give it a bit longer.
I haven’t been paying
huge
attention to the data from
Palladium, but it sounds like things are going to change. I think
we’re going to need you, and more like you, a whole lot in the near
future.’

‘This private
policing bill? I’m not sure…’

‘Neither am I,
but someone’s putting money and effort into that movement. Besides,
I can’t believe NIX are just going to give up on stealing Yliaster.
Maybe you stopped them once–’

‘It was not
just me.’

‘–but they’ll
try again. Somehow.’

Fox frowned,
but she had to agree. The National Intelligence Executive had shown
more than a casual interest in the project since its inception,
even though it was illegal for them to dig into commercial
enterprises. ‘Yeah. You’re probably right, but for right now, how
about we go get a couple of the massage androids to turn our
muscles to soup.’

‘You really are
a taskmaster, aren’t you?’

‘Oh yeah,
always cracking the whip.’

Terri smirked
and got to her feet. ‘Now there’s a thought.’

~~~

‘People seem a little…
hyped,’ Fox commented as she watched various residents of Luna City
throwing themselves around on the dance floor of a club Kit said
had quite good reviews. In the lower gravity, you could pull off a
few moves which would have resulted in fractures on Earth, but even
so, for a Tuesday night, there seemed to be more enthusiasm than
might have been expected.

‘The
Helium-three mining report came out on Friday,’ Terri replied.

‘Ah. So
everyone’s either celebrating their good fortune or staving off
depression.’

‘Something like
that. A lot of them are getting their leisure time in now before
they spend the next year working like dogs too. I heard you had a
hand in stopping that coming out early.’

Fox flashed her
a grin. ‘Someone tried to get their hands on it early and I was
here training the local emergency response team. Something else I
doubt I’ll be able to do again.’

‘Don’t count on
it. The Luna City Security Service wanted
you
to train their
people, not “someone from NAPA.” I
know
they asked for you
specifically.’

‘You know?’

‘Yeah. They
came to us to ask who we’d recommend for that kind of work after
Dallas. Actually, they asked who to go to in the UNTPP, and we said
that you’d quit and joined NAPA.’

‘Oh. You got me
that gig?’

‘Yup. So don’t
assume you won’t see more.’

Fox was not
really sure she wanted to see more of that, but… ‘I guess I might
see some of the money used where I can actually see it working this
time. It fell into NAPA’s budget and sank without trace last time.
Hey, is this helium thing why they’re upgrading the navigation
systems?’

‘Well spotted.
Traffic’s risen by eight per cent in the last four days and they’re
worried about the comms channels being overloaded. I heard Stellar
was contacted about upgrading the systems at L-one Control
too.’

MarTech Stellar
was not the largest producer of space hardware in the system, but
they were noted for having some of the most advanced designs,
especially in computer and communications systems. After two weeks
of study, Fox knew more about that than she had any real desire to.
‘Hey, I heard Stellar were working on antimatter engines.’

Terri shrugged.
‘Not my area, but yeah, I heard the same.’

‘Military
applications?’

‘The military
are more interested in antimatter reactors. More power output for
weapons in the same space. Hideously expensive to run though. The
engines are for out-system ships. You can get a lot more delta-V
out of a tank of fuel when you’re mixing in antimatter. Costs are
prohibitive though. It was all looking pretty good before they
cracked the manufacturing on the fuel pellets for pulse drives. Now
you’re looking at… forty times the price for a ton of fuel?
Something like that anyway. Still might be viable for fast runs out
to the gas giants.’

‘More
helium.’

‘That’s why
they want to get out there, sure. Though the moons out there…
There’s the possibility of finding living organisms out there,
Fox.’

Fox grinned.
‘Some people haven’t given up on Mars.’

Terri returned
the grin. ‘
Some
people still expect to find jungles on
Venus. And dinosaurs in the Hollow Earth.’

‘Did you ever
find the Nazis on the far side of this place?’

‘No one with a
German accent has ever turned up to complain about my skin colour,
but you never know, we haven’t been down
all
the craters
yet.’ She giggled. ‘And the Moon
is
a balloon. Must be if
they can dig helium out of it, right?’

‘
This
,’
Fox said, chuckling, ‘is a more appropriate conversation for an
evening out.’

‘Silly is
always appropriate.’

‘Not
absolutely
always…’

New York Metro.

The invitation to the
reading of Felix Kenan’s will had come as something of a surprise
to Sam. Yes, he had liked Felix a little more than many of his
clients, and Felix had, he thought, liked him back, but being asked
to the reading of the will… No one had even notified him of funeral
arrangements! Well, the house was full of things the old man had
loved and perhaps he was planning to hand out a few memories to the
people who had touched his life. There seemed to be few of
those.

Sam sat in one
of his more formal black suits on one chair set amid a short arc of
identical chairs. Beside him a girl who had always been introduced
to him as Marie had taken a seat, a handkerchief scrunched in her
hands. She would snivel into it periodically and Sam, used to
sizing people up for his work, had decided that Felix’s maid had
been quite fond of the old man too. The rest of the people there
were not anyone Sam recognised: most of them looked distinctly
corporate, though one older one was looking more sad, maybe an old
friend of the deceased.