Iron Sunrise

SPY VS. SPY

Wednesday was so busy working on a better way of expressing her rage that she didn’t notice when the walls around her recliner softened and flowed, containerizing her in a lozenge of dark foam and dropping her through the floor of the terminal into the cargo mesh of an intrasystem freighter bound for Centris Noctis. “Stupid brainless unplanned intelligence, no, stupid brainless unplanned stupid — what?”

Her itinerary cleared its throat again: “Please hold on tight! Departure in three hundred seconds! Departure in—”

“I heard you the first time, fuckmonster.” Anger was better than the gaping hole in her life, the absolute bitter despair she was trying so hard to ignore. The walls, flowing past and re-forming into the shape of a compact hexagonal cabin, did nothing to soothe her. “How long am I in transit?”

“Eep! Don’t hurt me! TransVirtual TravelWays welcomes all passengers to the transit shuttle Hieronymus B., departing Centris Magna hab four port authority bay sixteen for Centris Noctis hab eleven port authority bay sixty-two in four minutes and thirty seconds. Please familiarize yourself with our flight profile and safety briefing. After a few seconds of free fall, we will be under continuous acceleration at one-tenth of gee standard for eight hours, dropping to—”

Wednesday shut it out, nodding along vaguely and watching the blurred images in the wall through a thin haze of angry tears with her arms wrapped around her legs. Fuckmonsters, she thought vacantly. Following me, vaccing out the apartment, Mom, Dad, Jerm — The concrete horrors of the vision rubbed it all in, forcing it home. People chasing her, Herman admitting a mistake, unimaginable. Her credit balance when she’d checked it, This has got to be a mistake: there was enough money to buy a house, a good-sized cubic in an upmarket swing zone, never mind a ticket out of town on the next shuttle. “Give you a job.” Yeah, hut how much use is it? She’d give it all back in an instant to have the past day to run again with a different outcome. Just to be able to have that chat with Dad.

“How long?” she asked through her misery.

“Total transit time to Centris Noctis, currently six point one million kilometers distant, is sixteen hours and forty-one minutes. We hope you enjoy your flight and choose TransVirtual TravelWays again!”

The itinerary froze, motionless. Wednesday sighed. “Sixteen hours?” I should have caught the high-delta service, she realized. Not that she was used to flying anywhere at all, but this would take almost a day. “What shipboard facilities are available? Am I stuck in here for the whole trip?”

“Passengers are invited to remain in their seats for the duration of path injection maneuvering. Your seat is equipped to protect you from the consequences of local vertical variances. Eep! Please do not damage company assets willfully as these items are chargeable to your account. When the ‘thrust’ light is extinguished you may release your safety belt and walk around the ship. You are on A deck. B deck, C deck, and D deck are the other passenger decks on this flight. F deck provides a choice of entertainment arcades and the food court—”

“Enough.” Wednesday’s stomach lurched; she looked up in time to see the stylized thrust light in the ceiling flash urgently. Loops of safety webbing crawled out from the sides of her chair, wrapping around her securely as the gravity failed. “Oh, shit. Uh, how many other people are on this flight?”

“The manifest for this flight shows a total of forty-six passengers! You are one of five lucky Sybarite-class travelers! Below you in space, comfort, privacy, and our estimate are six Comfort class business passengers! The remainder are making use of our Basic-class package in common—”

“Shut up.” Wednesday squeezed her eyes shut tiredly. “I’m trying to think. I should be thinking.” Memories of lessons, way back in her early teens when Herman had first tempted her with strange adventure games. Playing at spy versus spy? She wouldn’t put anything beyond him: clearly Herman wasn’t simply a pet invisible friend, and equally clearly he had fingers in a lot of pies. All that stuff about evasion and tailing, how to locate surveillance nets and make use of blind spots, how to break relational integrity by finding camera overlaps and spoofing just one of them so the system interpolated an error … Wear the black hat. I’m chasing me, Wednesday. Just killed — her train of thought faltered for a moment, teetering on the edge — and now I’m after her. Who, how, where, what? “Can you stop listening until I call your name, ticket?”

“Madam is now in full privacy! All speech commands will be ignored until you unlock your suite. Call for ‘Wendigo’ when you want to discontinue privacy.”

“Uh-huh.” She glanced at the itinerary; it curled up, gripping the end of her recliner, and mimed mammalian sleep. “Hmm. At least two bad guys. If I’m lucky they think I was in the apartment when they, when they—” Don’t think about that. “If not, what will they do? Worst case: they’re covering the transit ferries so there’s one aboard right now. Or they’ve got friends waiting for me at the other end. I can’t evade that. But if they’re limited to following me, then, then…”

She sighed. Shit. The prospect of spending nearly seventeen hours trapped in the recliner was already beginning to seem like hell. There was a quiet chime, and the thrust light went out. “Oh.” It seemed to be taunting her. “Maybe they didn’t cover the port. Maybe.” She stared at it for another minute, then reached for the quick release on her safety belts and picked up her itinerary, stuffing it into a jacket pocket. “Wendigo. Open the door. There’s a manual outside? Okay, close the door and go back to full privacy mode as soon as I’ve gone.”

Outside the door of her room she found herself in a narrow circular corridor, with cabin doors spaced around the circumference and a twisting circular staircase leading down to the other decks. The ship hummed quietly beneath her as she took the steps six at a time, floating effortlessly down. The two lower passenger decks looked like open-plan seating, rows of recliners bolted side by side. As she passed she saw that most of them were empty. Business must be down, she decided.

The food court turned out to be a cramped circle of tables in the middle of a ring of food fabs programmed for different cuisines, a belt of arms waiting overhead to take orders. Wednesday found a small table at the edge and tapped it for the menu. She was just beginning to figure out her way around it when somebody sat down opposite her.

“Hi.” She looked up, startled. He smiled shyly at her. Wow! Two meters tall, he had blue eyes, blond hair that looked so real it had to be a family heirloom — tied back in a ponytail — diamond earrings, not too much muscle or makeup, skin like — “I couldn’t help noticing you. Are you traveling alone?”

“Maybe not.” She found herself smiling right back. “I’m Wednesday.”

“Leo. May I … ?”

“Sure.” She watched him sit down, graceful in the low-gee environment. “I was about to do lunch. Are you hungry?”

“I could be.” Beat. He grinned. “Food, too.”

Oh. Wednesday watched him, beginning to have second thoughts about the idea of a full stomach. He was gorgeous, and he was focused right at her. Where were you at Sammy’s party? “Where are you traveling?” she asked aloud.

“Oh, I’m on vacation. Going to stay with my uncle.” He shrugged. “Can I interest you in a drink?”

“What, you want to get me drunk and drag me off to my cabin?” She tapped on the tabletop for a bowl of miso soup and a hand roll. “Hmm. What kind of drink did you have in mind?”

“Something exquisite and bubbly, I guess. To fit in with the company.” He leaned forward, close enough for her to inhale the faint scent of his skin: “If you’re interested?”

“I think so.” She waited a second, then leaned back, watching him with narrowed eyes. “Are you going to order anything?”

“Mm-hmm.” She watched him as he scrolled the tabletop, jabbing at the wine submenu and ordering a plate of spiced noodles — coordinated and confident, she thought — and a bottle of something that was not only exquisite and bubbly, but also expensive. “Do you often go to stay with your uncle?” she asked, feeling idiotic, a conversational casualty in progress. “I don’t mean to pry or anything—”

“Not really.” The waitron was back, bearing a bottle with an intricate pressure-relief cork and a pair of fluted glasses. He took them and raised an eyebrow at her. “It’s not like there are more than two flights a day between Magna and Noctis, is it?” He poured carefully, and handed her a nearly full glass. “To your very good … taste?”

Wednesday took a gulp of sparkling wine to hide her turmoil. Everything about Leo was right, and he was an eminently eligible choice for a friendly fuck to while away the journey — except that he was too right. Too polished, too witty, too includable. He was the sort of fashion accessory the “in” crowd always had on display. Why pick on her for an evening’s dalliance? She glanced around. There was a double handful of other passengers in the food hall, mostly in groups, but there were one or two singles of indeterminate age: well, maybe he was telling the truth. “To my very good luck — in meeting you,” she said, and knocked back the rest of her glass. “I was really afraid today was going to be a dead loss.”

The food arrived, and Wednesday managed to drink her soup without taking her eyes off him. Lust confused her. What is it about him? she wondered. “Are you traveling in Comfort or Syb?” she asked.

“Cattle class.” He frowned momentarily. “All I get is a seat, a curtain, and a boring neck massage. Why?”

“Oh, nothing,” she said innocently. My place or yours? was a no-brainer. In fact -

Her earlobe began to vibrate.

“ ’Scuse me a moment.” She tapped the table for privacy, then yet more privacy: everything around her went distant and fuzzy, like being inside a velvet-lined black hole. “Yeah?” she demanded.

“Wednesday?” He sounded hesitant.

“Who — wait a minute. My phone was switched off!”

“You said if I was serious I should find your links myself?”

Well not exactly, but — She crossed her legs, uneasy. “Yeah, you did, didn’t you? Look, I’m going to be away for a while. You were lucky to get me without a twenty-second lag. I won’t be back for months. Is there anything we need to say?”

“Uh, yes.” Blow sounded hesitant at the end of the bitstream. “I, uh, I wanted to apologize for being too talky last night. Uh, I guess if you don’t want to see me—”

“No, it’s not that.” Wednesday frowned minutely. Outside her cone of silence she could see Leo watching her intently; she moved instinctively to cover her mouth with the palm of her hand as she spoke. “I really am going on a voyage right now. I know I didn’t want to get downheavy last night, but that was just the way it was then. If you want to look me up when I get back, that would be great. But I’m off-station already, so there’s no chance to meet up first.”

“Are you in some kind of trouble?” he asked.

“No, I — yes. Shit! Yes, I’m in trouble.” She caught Leo’s gaze, rolled her eyes at him, lying with her face. He winked at her, and she forced a grin. The warmth in her belly turned to ice. My rings. These are Hermans rings. The untraceable ones. “Who told you?”

“This, uh, guy I sometimes work for, he called me up just now and told me you were in bad trouble and needed a friend. Is there anything I can do to help?”

Leo was pulling a face at her: Wednesday pulled a face right back. “I think you just did, just by calling. Listen, are you in trouble? Has anyone been round to talk to you? Cops?”

“Yes.” His voice tended to break out into a croak when he was worried. “Said they just wanted to clear something up. Asked if I’d seen you. I said ‘no’.”

She relaxed slightly. “Your invisible friend, is he called Herman?”

A second’s silence. “You know Herman?”

“Listen to him,” she hissed, rolling her eyes some more and shrugging through the sound screen at Leo. “There’s something bad going on. I’m being followed. Just stay out of this, all right?”

“Okay.” He paused. “I want to ask you lots of questions sometime. Are you coming back?”

“I hope so.” Leo was looking bored. “Listen, I’ve got to go. Problem to deal with. Thanks for talking — I’ve got your callback. Bye.”

“I — uh. Bye.”

“Privacy off.” She grinned at Leo.

“Who was that?” he asked, curiously.

“Old friend,” she said carelessly. “Didn’t know I was leaving.”

“Well, isn’t that a shame?” He pointed at her place setting. “Your soup’s cold.”

“Oh well.” She shrugged, then stood up, her heart beating fast. It wasn’t arousal anymore, though. At least, it wasn’t sexual arousal. Her palms were cold and her stomach threatening to twist itself into knots. “Where are you staying on Noctis?” she asked. “I was thinking, maybe I could come visit you?”

“Uh, I don’t know. My uncle, he’s got some pretty weird ideas,” he said edgily. “How about we try your cabin? I’ve always wanted to see how the other half live.”

Shit. He knew which class she was in. Careless of him — or he was overconfident. “Okay,” she said lightly, smiling as he took her wrist and pulled her toward him. Another sniff of that enticing man-scent, something about his skin that made her want to slip her arm under his shirt and inhale. That’s something specific for your vomeronasal organ, something to go straight to your hypothalamus and get you wet, isn’t it? Her senses seemed to sharpen as she leaned against him. “Come on,” she breathed in his ear, wondering how on earth she was going to get out of this mess. Her heart was pounding, and it felt like lust, or terror, or both. She was actually leaning against him, knees weak with something. A neurotoxin? she wondered, but no — that would be much too public if he was what she thought he might be. Probably just pheromone receptor blockers. Come on.

On the staircase he paused for a moment and pulled her close. “Let me carry you?” he whispered in her ear. She nodded, dizzy with tension, and he picked her up, her head resting close to his ear as he climbed the stairs two steps at a time. A deck, the ring of Syb-class capsules. “Where’s your—”

“Hold on, put me down, I’ll find it.” She smiled at him and leaned close. The corridor lights were dim, most of the other passengers snoozing their way through the flight. He smelled of fresh sweat and something musky, treacherously intoxicating. Herman had taught her a term for this: Venus trap. She grabbed him and pressed her lips against his in a kiss that he returned enthusiastically. Hips bumped. “Shit, not here.” She tugged him along the corridor, nerves on fire. “Here.” She tapped the door panel. “I need the rest room. You go on inside and make yourself at home. I won’t be long.”

“Really?” he asked, stepping inside her room.

“Yeah.” She leaned close, nibbled him delicately on the neck. “I won’t be a minute.” Heart pounding, she stepped back and hit the door close button. Then she tapped the panel next to it, the privacy lock. Her heart was trying to climb out through her rib cage: “Did I really just do that?” she asked herself. “Wendigo. Suite, can you hear me?”

“Greetings, passenger Strowger! I can hear you.” Its voice was tinny, coming to her through the external control plate.

“Please lock my suite door. Do not unlock the door until one hour after arrival. I want to sleep in. Divert all incoming calls, cancel outgoing routing. Maximum sound damping. Return to full privacy mode and add voiceprint authentication to keyword.”

The simpleminded suite agent swallowed it. “Warning! Privacy may be overridden by authorized crew members in event of accident or medical emergency—”

“How many crew does this flight carry?” Her stomach lurched, icy cold soup sloshing.

“This is an unattended flight.”

“Keep it that way. Now shut up and don’t talk to anyone.” There was a tentative knocking from inside the cabin, almost inaudible through the smart foam. Then a faint bump as if something massive had bounced off the inside of the door. Wednesday pouted at it, then headed for the staircase, a wistful urge to run back and apologize still fighting it out with her common sense. Sex on legs, packaged just for her? Where were you during Sammy’s party? “Vacc’ing out Mom’n’Dad,” she muttered to herself, half-blind with anger and loss as she hunted round C deck for an empty row to colonize. “Unless he’s the best friendly fuck I’ve ever dropped by mistake…” She carried on arguing with herself for a long time before she dozed off, and by the time she was awake again the ferry had passed turnover and was nearly ready to dock.

“Okay, I’m here. What do I do now?”

Noctis concourse wasn’t built with fail-safe operation in mind. It was a product of the ebullient Septagonese economic miracle, so optimistic that nothing could possibly go wrong. Gravity thereabouts was a variable, vectored in whichever direction the architects had willed it. There were jungles on the walls, sand dunes on the ceiling, moebius walkways snaking through them for maximum visual impact.

Wednesday hurried along a strip locked to a steady half gee, trailing behind a flickering lightbug. She passed occasional clumps of other long-distance travelers — a mix of emigrants, merchants taking the long caravanserai, wanderjahr youth on the Grand Tour — and a variety of variously enticing and annoying shops disguised as environmental features. Butterflies the size of dinner plates flapped slowly past overhead, their wings flickering with historical docudramas. A small toroidal rain cloud spun slowly over a bright crimson nest of muddy-rooted mangroves, small lightning discharges clicking across its inner hole. Wednesday glanced past it, through a chink in the artistic foliage that led into a sudden perspective shift; stars glinted through diamond windows over a kilometer away. It was very Septagon, life defying vacuum, and for a moment she was dizzy with homesickness and the infinitely deep pool of depression that waited just beneath the thin ice of her self-control. If we hadn’t come here, Mom and Dad would still be alive. If. If.

“Follow the lightbug to your connection with the liner Romanov. Once you reach the Romanov’s dock you should go aboard and remain in your stateroom until departure. Which is due in under six hours. I can cover for you for some time, but if you venture around the terminal, it is possible that a police agent will spot you and place you under volitional arrest. I believe there is a high probability that no charges will be brought, but you would miss the departure, and there is a high risk that the individuals pursuing you would locate you and make another attempt on your life. At the very least, they would be able to regain their lock on you. Good work with the suite, by the way.”

“But what do I do?” she demanded nervously, stepping around a gaggle of flightless birds that had decided to roost in the middle of the footpath.

“Once you are on the liner and it is under way, they cannot reinforce their surveillance. I believe they are stretched thin, covering the orbitals around Centris Delta. There may be one or more aboard the ship, but you should be able to avoid them. Use the funds in your account to buy essentials aboard the ship; keep yourself alert. The next port of call is New Dresden, and I expect by that time to have fully identified your pursuers.”

“Wait — you mean you don’t know who they are? What is this?” Her voice rose.

“I believe them to be a faction of a group calling themselves the ReMastered. Whether they are an official faction, or a rogue splinter group, is unknown at this time. They may even be using the ReMastered as a cover: they’ve concealed their trail very effectively. If you go along with my suggestions, you will force them to expose themselves. Do you understand? I will have help waiting for you at New Dresden.”

“You mean this ship is going to New Dresden? I—” She found herself talking into silence. “Shit. ReMastered.” Whoever they were, at least she had a name, now. A name for something to hate.

The loop path branched, and her lightbug darted off to one side. Wednesday followed it tiredly. It was past midnight by her local time, and she badly needed something to keep her going. Here, the concourse took a turn for the more conventional. The vegetation thinned out, replaced by tiled blood diamond panes the size of her feet. Large structures bumped up from the floor and walls, freight lifts and baggage handlers and stairwells leading down into the docking tunnels that led out to the berthed starships. Some ships maintained their own gravity, didn’t they? Wednesday wasn’t sure what to expect of this one — wasn’t it from Old Earth? She vaguely remembered lectures about the place, docutours and ecodramas. It had all sounded confusingly complicated and backward, and she’d been trying to keep Priz the Axe from cracking her tablet instead of listening to the professora. Was Earth a high-level kind of place, or backward like home had been?

The lightbug paused in front of her, then went dark. “Welcome to embarkation point four,” piped her itinerary, somewhat muffled from inside a jacket pocket. “Please have your itinerary, identification documents, and skinprint ready for inspection!” The bug lit up again, darting back and forth between Wednesday and a powered walkway leading to the level below the concourse.

“Okay.” Wednesday unsealed her pocket. “Uh, identification. Hmm.” She fumbled with her rings for a moment. “Herman,” she hissed, “do these rings authenticate me?”

Click. “Default identity, Victoria Strowger. Message from owner: Have fun with these, and remember to check the files I’ve stored in them under your alias.” Clunk.

She blinked, bemused. “O-kay…”

Down below the wild efflorescences of the port concourse she found herself in a cool, well-lit departure hall fronting a boarding tunnel. A redheaded woman in some kind of ornate blue-and-gold uniform — How quaint! she thought — stood by the entrance. “Your papers, please?”

“Uh, Vicky Strowger.” She held up her itinerary. “Have I come to the right place?”

The woman glanced aside at some kind of internal list. “Yes, we’ve been expecting you.” She smiled with professional ease. “I see you’ve got a companiotronic guide. Would you like me to update it for shipboard use?”

“Sure.” Wednesday handed the furry blue nuisance over to the woman. “If you don’t mind me asking, who are you and what happens next?”

“Good questions,” the woman said distractedly, stroking the back of the guide’s skull while it spasmed in a fit of downloading. “I’m Elena, from the purser’s office. If you have any questions later, feel free to ask room service to put you through to me. We’re not scheduled to depart for another five and a half hours, but most passengers are already aboard, which is why — Ah, hello! Mr. Hobson? You’re earlier than usual, sir. If you’d care to wait one second — Here you are, Victoria. If you’d like to go through into the elevator it will take you straight to the accommodation level you’re on. Do you have any luggage?” She raised an eyebrow at Wednesday’s small shake of the head. “All right. You’re in Sybarite-class row four, Corridor C. There’s a fab you can use for the basics in your room, and a range of boutiques two levels down and one corridor across from you if you want to shop for extras later. Anything else you need to know, feel free to ask for me. Bye!” She was already turning to deal with the unusually early Mr. Hobson as Wednesday slid the talking travel guide back into its pocket. She shook her head: Too much, too fast. So Earth had fabs? Then it wasn’t a backwater like New Dresden — or home — and she wasn’t going to have to camp out in a refugee cell for a week. Maybe the journey would turn out all right, especially if Herman had given her his usual thorough map of the service facilities …