APRIL 8, 2074
SPACE STATION EUSS Kuipers, High Earth orbit.
The line of disembarking passengers curled languidly through the aisles, but the shuttle deck shook as if there was a stampede. His partner Lindsay clenched the rail and hauled her lame leg onto the steps that corkscrewed up and out to Kuipers space station. Watching her battle even Kuipers’ low gravity confirmed what he’d been planning over the last seven hours.
This station drew them here like moths, although maybe that was not the right metaphor. The first message sparked in the hotsheets motel. The second, six miles south on I-95 as he drove with the air conditioning wheezing against the Florida humidity and clobbering sun.
It was not the message itself. The air had turned ionic. The windshield wipers switched on and the static electricity tingled his neck. At first, he thought it was an oncoming Florida thunderstorm. But when Lindsay’s phone beeped, he already knew what it said. Word for word, like déjà vu, or as if the message arced across the sky into his neuroface. They made a U-turn into a strip mall with a taco truck, pausing to grab shrimp burritos, and then turned north on I-95, eating their lunch in their lap.
They drove straightaway to the Jacksonville Spaceport. No traffic. This station pulled them along, not like moths to a flame, more like the rails of a maglev train. The air was electric the whole trip. But there was never a storm. Not a drop of rain. The wipers switched off immediately after they returned to highway cruising speed. He thought it was a glitch in the rental car software and steeled himself for an argument with the rental counter over damage. But the young associate smiled politely, mmmm-hmming and nodding as if it happened every day in Florida, as if there were already complaints lodged over this very vehicle, and they got to the gate with forty-five minutes to spare.
Seven hours since the taco truck, leading to these spiral stairs into Kuipers. Two hours to Jacksonville, two hours at the spaceport, then three hours to orbit. Seven hours, which they spent in silence.
She was his boss and fifteen years younger. He had nothing to say to her, and the less she said, the better. He didn’t want to waste a lot of air pretending to be nice. Silence was golden. It gave him seven hours to consider his most pressing problem. He was going to kill her. The thirty million bounty on Devana’s head wouldn’t stay a secret much longer. She’d want in. Or she’d rat him out to the agency. After thirty years, he wasn’t letting her ruin his retirement plan. He thought the time, place, and manner were his choice, but he wondered. This station was like a worm gear driving his brain.
As his partner Lindsay dragged her leg onto the first step, the brunette spaceline attendant glared at him over her horn-rimmed eyeglasses. She had loosely tied hair, a tight blue uniform, and looked human enough. Her eyes were moist. Her hair shiny. Maybe she was real. It was increasingly hard to tell the difference between real flesh and the synthetic-skin over 3D-printed-silicone big-tittied gynoids used for service.
The attendant’s eyes shifted from him, to Lindsay, and back, side-nodding and prodding him to help. When he didn’t move, she rolled her eyes and rushed forward. Lindsay put one hand up. Her blond ponytail wagged no. Her other hand clamped the rail so hard he thought it might bend.
Lindsay grimaced and lifted herself a step. “The low g makes it stiff from sitting. A few steps, I’ll have the kinks out.”
The way the spaceline attendant scowled at him reminded him of his ex-wife. How was he supposed to help Lindsay hoist herself up steps and out of the shuttle? He could barely walk on this wobbly space station himself. The deck shuddered as passengers clambered out. He tried not to think about the fact that they were spinning around and around some invisible center point in space to simulate gravity.
Lindsay hobbled up one step, then another, and another, corkscrewing to the exit. The brunette crew member glared at him, scowling, with her hands on her snooty, round, too-perfect hips.
While he watched Lindsay struggle and climb, the mystery of Kuipers stewed in his subconscious.
As he mounted the first step to follow her up and out, the spaceline brunette leaned in. Her breath was warm on his neck. He could smell her perfume. Her blouse was low. For a moment, he remembered the two 38D reasons he stayed with his ex despite her mood swings.
She whispered, “you have mechanical legs. You’re her partner. You should help her.”
She was too perfectly proportioned to be human. He took a firm handful of her ass, pulled her closer, and squeezed. “I don’t take orders from a gynoid, bitch.”
His face stung before he realized she’d slapped him. His cheek was on fire. Her ass felt like muscle and the slap felt human, so he let go. “That’s assault on a Federal officer.”
“Touch me like that again, you wont be re-boarding this shuttle.”
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Before he could respond, Lindsay called from halfway to the skybridge, “Leave it, Brett. Let’s go.”
Thumb-pointing up the stairs, the flight attendant shook her head and pasted a big sneer across her face. She said, “Yeah, Brett, let’s go.”
The sarcasm sounded human, too.
Lindsay raised her voice. “Brett. I said leave her. We have a four hour layover. We need to make the most of it.”
The narrow spiral stairwell shuddered violently as he climbed, like airplane turbulence. A von Braun wheel like Kuipers rotated to simulate gravity and needed to be balanced, like a tire, otherwise it would precess and vibrate itself to pieces. How it was balancing the load as passengers debarked, he didn't know. But every jostle made the servos in his legs whine and his stomach shift.
Lindsay halted at the top of the stairs, waving a family on. He waited, jittery, his back in pain. A father with a baby in his arms humped luggage onto the skybridge. Then he heard a squeal. A girl appeared with a mop of black hair, and wearing loose denim pants and a baby blue t-shirt. She ran with one hand up and twirling an invisible flag. She ricocheted off Lindsay and then raced up the skybridge ahead of her father.
The mom appeared, scrambling after the child, towing a carryon, and shouting, “Vega, come back!”
“I am so sorry. I put her down for a second,” the mom said, pausing at Lindsay.
Lindsay smiled. “Once they walk they love to test their independence.”
The mother lingered, swapping parenting stories with Lindsay, while her kid was rolling down the skybridge like a grenade. He waited. His neck cramped and his thighs trembled. He inhaled a ragged breath to keep himself from screaming at them to move. He had a view of the small of Lindsay’s back, with her pistol printing through her blue suit.
The Mom noticed her little grenade was about to blow and scrambled. Lindsay limped into a gap in the skybridge traffic.
The toddler flew down the skybridge with her blue t-shirt flagging behind her. The mother kept shouting for the toddler to stop. A couple blocked the finish line. The toddler swerved too late, colliding with their luggage and crashing to the ground. Peals of giggles turned to tears. The mother swooped in and scooped her up.
He caught up to Lindsay. Once they were side-by side, she said, “That flight attendant. You will have to go back later and apologize.”
“It was a fucking robot.”
“I didn’t think so, but I didn’t get a close enough look. Looked human to me. If she was a droid its one upgrade away from having rights.”
“Droids will never have rights while I am at the FBI.”
She gripped the skybridge railing like a cane, and halted. “How many times have you been to space, Brett?”
“Bolkov’s funeral. Once.”
“The rules are different here. The further we get from D.C., the less influence your badge has. Out here you are a meat suit with a bad attitude. That flight attendant will flag you as a nuisance. Maybe throw you off the flight.”
“It can’t do that. We are Federal Agents.”
“Can. Will. Maybe already done.” She grimaced. She rolled and stretched the ankle on her bad leg, and then continued down the skybridge.
Ahead, the toddler with the mop of black hair and droopy denim pants that had been charging down the runway was now in her mother’s arms. She’d draped herself over the mother’s shoulder and was shooting daggers at him with red, swollen eyes, as if everything was his fault.
“That’s bull.”
“Not even the droids will put up with your shit out here, Brett. Get used to it.”
He watched Lindsay hobble a few steps, using the handrail for support, then rushed to catch up. The skybridge bounced with each footfall of his aluminum legs. Simulated gravity felt nothing like real gravity. He felt like he was constantly falling forward. The floor wobbled. He tried not to think about the fact they were floating forty thousand kilometers above the Earth in a thin metal can. He wanted to stand on hard ground, even if it was on the moon.
Once he’d caught up to her, she paused again and braced herself on the skybridge’s railing. “Kuipers was Vega’s last port of call. We should start at security.”
Vega was the name of that little shit running down the skybridge. The toddler still glared at him with red eyes, as if she’d overheard his thoughts. “Say that again?”
“Vega,” Lindsay said, lifting and flexing her injured leg, “is the name of the ship smuggling Lebofield.”
“Isn’t this a prisoner transport?”
“I guess you haven’t read your messages,” she said, her face twisting up in pain as she stretched her calves.
He felt the same tingle in his neuroface and the same sense of déjà vu he’d felt in the car. He was drawn to this station like a magnet. You know why, Brett. We’re tools, were the words she’d uttered as they left the hotsheets.
“Devana seized Vega,” he said.
What else was on that ship besides three fugitives? He pictured the ship landing on the moon with its containers shrouded in fog. A strange image, since there was no water vapor in space.
“That’s right,” she said, pushing off the railing. “And someone high up wants us to look at the crew.”
The toddler was still in his mother’s arms, and tossing red daggers his way. He said, “Whatever Devana touches turns to disaster and we’ll have to clean it up.”
“You could be right. She’s bringing Vega back to the colony—”
The toddler reached over her mother’s shoulder, her hands outstretched, as if asking him for a rescue. Still stabbing him with bloodshot eyes, she screamed NO!
His heart raced and his neuroface felt like a thousand white-hot needles in his skull. He saw a brilliant white airlock. He was outside his body, watching himself run his finger along its seals. Over the top, down the sides. It was clean, but there was a problem in its circuit board. People had died. He sensed it, as if he could hear its voice. He touched its panel. Blinking red. He couldn’t see the airlock’s number.
He blinked. Lindsay asked, “You ok?”
The mother and toddler turned left and disappeared into the boarding gate.
“I feel wobbly. This whole station feels like its going to fall out of the sky.“
“It’s the artificial gravity. Give it a couple hours, you’ll get used to it.”
A few hours. Get used to it, she said. People didn’t belong in space, least of all him.
She waved him forward. “Let’s go. First stop, security. We can make a courtesy call and get the tapes of Vega’s crew.”
His neuroface still tanged, as if all those hot needles had left a brand on his cortex. “After you.”
As she limped down the skybridge, he smiled. He was being guided. Or drawn. He saw the plan. This station was where he was going to put her down, like the crippled dog she was. But he wasn’t just here to kill Lindsay. He was here for something more important.