Chapter 008
Sedated Companions
Sol sizzled from the far end of the tarmac at the Bello Spaceport Complex just outside Quito. CAT and I had taken the supersonic down the morning of, business class tickets courtesy of a small, nameless division of James Madison Defense Systems. Wilder, I assumed, had opted for private transportation. We had agreed to meet on board the Lunar Express in advance of official boarding in order for me to perform a cursory sweep of the public areas and to meet the crew. While he crowed over how his ability to pull strings behind the scenes was the only way such arrangements were possible, I couldn’t help but think of how quickly his request had been run up the ladder to Denaro, who’d no doubt signed off on it personally.
The rest of the week had flown by as I cobbled together what little intelligence I could in advance of the trip. Getting my hands on the actual guest list was trivial in difficulty, but equal in value. It was a veritable who’s who of industry bigwigs, esteemed journalists, and prominent socialites, none of them in any position to benefit from petty crime or harassing Vance Wilder. Denaro’s invitees were an immaculate group chosen to maximize the credibility and prestige of his grand exhibition. He no doubt saw the value in buttering them up ahead of time with luxury accommodations in order to guarantee they’d be in high spirits for a red carpet landing on Luna and the star-studded expo to follow. Whether good press was worth the price of restoring an entire space elevator was yet to be seen, but I trusted Denaro’s instincts in the matter.
The duty roster was equally uninspiring. Each person on the list, from the flight crew to down to the kitchen porter, had been through several rounds of scrutiny. In addition to the routine background checks provided by their various unions and employers, Denaro required an additional round of security screenings for anyone not directly in his employ. As a private entity, the Express was not required to carry a space marshal or any other federal agents. One less chance for a wildcard to sneak on board.
I wheeled my carry-on past rows of identical hangars, some of their mammoth doors pulled open on their tracks far enough for me to glimpse incomprehensibly advanced vehicles in various states of disassembly. As I walked by, the weed-choked alleys separating the imposing beige structures provided snapshots of Lunar Express roosting on the launchpad.
A miracle of technology in its time, the majestic space elevator remained a testament to the unlikely marriage of precision engineering and unjustifiable extravagance. The vessel itself consisted of three concentric rings that would rotate independently after it escaped the atmosphere. Powerful electromagnets formed the small innermost ring. They were responsible for keeping the Express attached to the tether that guided it to its destination. Dozens of long, thin pillars arranged at regular intervals attached it to the central ring, which primarily served to provide structural support but also played host to some of the ship’s less critical infrastructure and checked baggage. Another series of spokes affixed this ring to the exterior one that contained the traditional passenger compartments. There were dedicated spaces for eating, drinking, spending leisure time, and sleeping, as well as the staff-only areas like the operations center, the kitchens, and the crew’s quarters. Of course none of this was visible from my vantage point except a wide swath of the exterior ring. I’d memorized it from poring over press releases.
CAT remained surprisingly tight to my hip for his first time in a foreign land. Normally he’d be chasing unfamiliar scents on the wind and pretending to not hear my orders to heel until he was actually outside of earshot. Perhaps it was the relentless drone of machinery radiating from the repair bays or the discomfort of being dwarfed by various spindly command towers and rocket service structures. As we approached the standalone concourse, he didn’t stray from my shadow.
Bello Spaceport was not a conventional passenger hub, so there was no shuttle service, no baggage handler. I hadn’t gotten the memo. Judging from the cluster of personal vehicles and accompanying swarm of assistants outside the main building, I was the only one.
“Need a hand with your luggage?” asked a familiar voice.
“I wasn’t aware that the Lunar Express flew under the Russo Air brand.”
I turned to find Matteo striding toward me, taking the final drag from a cigarette. He’d abandoned his tactical gear in favor of a fashionable suit. He wore no tie, the top two buttons of his Oxford unbuttoned, and his jacket flapped open in the crisp morning breeze. An expensive-looking leather satchel was slung over one shoulder. A pair of mirrored sunglasses prevented me from gauging the progress of his black eye.
“Soon enough, soon enough.” He flicked his smoldering butt across the cracked asphalt, where a gust spirited away toward the adjoining chaparral. “Ready to do this thing?”
CAT jogged over in search of pets. Matteo obliged.
“I hope so. Are you sure this is a good idea?” I squinted at the concourse in the distance. It was still too far away for me to make out any faces, but I was one of the few holdouts without any sort of cybernetic alterations. By now the surgery to fix an astigmatism was only slightly less invasive than fully upgrading to telescopic vision. “We don’t need anyone to know we’re working together.”
“That’s easy, because we’re not. You work for Denaro, I work for Denaro. Our paths might be parallel, but that’s about it.”
I waited for the No offense. It wasn’t coming.
“At least that’s what I’ll tell anyone who asks,” he continued, his deadpan failing. That cheeky fuck. “Except Wilder, obviously. So, can I take your bag, or what?”
I glanced over both shoulders, fully aware that there were plenty of people outside my field of vision still capable of seeing me.
Matteo smirked. “If you think those snobs in there give a single shit about anything happening past the tips of their own noses, you’re in for a rude awakening. You and I are the help. We could be out here juggling chainsaws and they wouldn’t give a shit if we cut our own legs off so long as we didn’t bleed on them.”
He was right. As far as they were concerned, we were two faceless laborers exchanging burdens. I unzipped my carry-on and pulled out the slim polycarbonate valise I’d retrieved from beneath the cabin floorboards. I’d repacked it before I left, even managing to squeeze in the cobalt Ratifier without sacrificing anything except organizational integrity. Denaro instructed me to give anything I wanted to get past the baggage inspection to Matteo for safekeeping. The fewer accomplices we had to swear into our secret alliance, the lower the chance for leaks.
The rat-faced enforcer dumped the modified bug-out kit into his satchel. It thunked heavily against something inside, metal on metal, but he did not look concerned. He extracted another cigarette from a platinum snapcase in his jacket and lit it. My eyes watered at the first plume of thick, skunky smoke. It was not tobacco.
A cough choked off his laugh, or vice versa. He offered me the pre-roll. Tendrils of inviting haze curled from its glowing cherry.
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“Get it in while you still can.”
I declined with a simple wave. CAT’s sniffing kicked into overdrive. I nudged him upwind, not interested in figuring out the logistics of getting a stoned dog onto a luxury spacecraft.
Matteo shrugged and took another drag. “Suit yourself,” he rasped. “Three days in that fishbowl with the bluehairs is gonna make you wish you’d walked to Luna.”
With that, he marched onward, a stream of smoke still billowing over his shoulder. I watched him leave, paralyzed with disbelief.
“Is that it?” I shouted after him. “How am I supposed to get in touch with you?”
“Same way you normally would. It’s an elevator. I can’t get but so far.” He turned and lowered his glasses. His orbital bruising blushed violet around a bloodshot sclera. “Tell Wilder I said…” He punctuated the sentence with an obscene gesture.
“I definitely won’t,” I called back, but he was already heading for the concourse again.
“Think about it,” he yelled over his shoulder.
Fucking hell, I thought. At least it wasn’t Luca.
I worked my way around the outskirts of the crowd, not wanting to involve myself with them any sooner than absolutely necessary. There was no chance of me blending in. My next best option was to wait until there were enough distractions that they would ignore me entirely. If it were half as good as advertised, the opulence of the Lunar Express was enough to induce sensory overload. Right now I was the ill-dressed guy stalking around a cavernous terminal with a talking dog. Not exactly inconspicuous. I looked for a spaceport employee that could direct me to my rendezvous point.
Once she was finished fawning over CAT, a petite woman in her early 20s escorted me past the velvet rope. She had an impressive number of merit pins tacked to her uniform vest and a brisk, purposeful stride. As we walked, she peppered me with questions about the trip and what I was looking forward to the most. I kept my answers vague, not wanting to let on anything about my work for Wilder or Denaro before I had a better idea of where general loyalties lie.
She deposited me at the door to the captain’s office with a smart quarter bow and returned to the concourse on autopilot. Wilder had arranged for us to meet here, but I wasn’t sure whether he was the type to show up fifteen minutes early for a meeting to establish dominance or fifteen minutes late to prove a point. I tended to show up on time for meetings because I wasn’t a manipulative piece of shit who messed with other people’s schedules for personal gain.
The placard on the door read Captain Dillon Fox. I remembered his name from the manifest. Denaro had waived his extended security screening, perhaps in deference to their long-standing work relationship. I wasn’t sure what sort of qualifications it took to pilot a vehicle hooked to a guidewire, but Fox was apparently a capable hand.
If Wilder wasn’t already behind the closed door, he could catch up once he got there. I rapped twice.
“Enter,” came the clipped response from within.
The office was bigger than I expected, handsomely appointed in stained cherrywood and burnished brass. Neither of the two chairs in front of the double pedal executive desk was occupied. Behind it sat a weathered man in his early 60s, clad in an immaculate dress uniform complete with gold epaulettes. His snow-white hair was neatly parted and his matching beard trimmed with precision. Piercing eyes of a glacial hue looked me up and down unabashedly. I felt like I was about to be turned down for a job I never applied for.
“Sit.”
There was a fine line between a lack of manners and a disdain for trifling formalities. I gave him the benefit of the doubt and took a seat. The door closed itself behind me. No doubt a feat of clever engineering, I still would not have been surprised if it had done so under the power of Fox’s willpower alone.
The captain clicked off his desktop workstation, shifting the weight of his full attention onto me. His single cursory glance at CAT told me he’d been thoroughly apprised of the situation.
“It’s been made clear to me that you’re aboard for a special assignment.” His choice not to name the patron of my mission made me wonder exactly how clued in he was. He had history with Denaro, but for all intents and purposes, I was a living example of the loyalty Wilder’s deep pockets could buy. “As such, the crew has been instructed to afford you a reasonable amount of leeway in carrying out your duties. Do not confuse this for free reign over my ship. It is my job, first and foremost, to ensure the safety and the enjoyment of Mr. Denaro’s passengers on the Lunar Express. If you are caught overstepping your bounds at the expense of my directive, you will be completing your investigation from the brig.”
A specific set of rules would have been preferable to this ominous warning, but something told me that Captain Fox was not the sort to whip up a list of bullet points on my account. Asking for further clarification would only broadcast my intentions, giving him and the crew specific behaviors to look out for. I’d be better off seeking forgiveness later than asking for permission now. I wondered if the brig was as ritzy as the rest of the ship.
“Will Mr. Wilder be joining us for the tour?” As interested as I was in familiarizing myself with the layout of the Express before launch, the walkabout offered another invaluable opportunity. If I couldn’t sus out Fox’s allegiances in a vacuum, perhaps I could from his interactions with my ostensible client.
“Wilder’s running late. Says he’ll send for you when he’s ready.” That wasn’t promising. “And the tour’s canceled.” Even worse.
“Do you mind if I ask why?”
“As thrilled as I’d be to take time out of my schedule to show you around, I’m already up to my eyeballs in shit.” As jarring as Fox’s first breach of decorum might have been, especially when directed at least in part at me, it humanized him a bit. “On top of all the normal work that goes into a journey of this magnitude, the head chef’s come down sick and the crew’s convinced we’ve got a ghost.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Things keep going missing. Tools, housekeeping supplies, nothing major. And most of it turns up eventually. Sometimes where it was, other times in random places. It’s the fact that it’s stuff coming and going from behind locked doors that’s got them spooked.”
“Are they sure they’re not just being forgetful or crossing paths with someone else doing the same job?”
Fox shook his head. “It got so bad they demanded to see the access logs for the rooms. Every time an account pings the system it is recorded, even when we are grounded. Came up with nothing.”
“How about video?”
“Only in common areas. I don’t suppose you’ve got any experience in dealing with the paranormal?” His tone remained impassive, accentuating his dry wit.
“Sorry. I don’t double-book.” The irony of this statement was not lost on me. “Now what’s that you said about the chef?”
“Monsieur Boiardo took ill after the crew’s farewell banquet.”
A French title for an Italian surname? It was that kind of kitchen. I could already see the poofy white hats bobbing along the service line.
“Hopefully not food poisoning,” I posited.
“Nothing of the sort. He was rushed to the hospital, where they found his Roux-en-Y implant was seriously degraded. Turns out that not even the finest medical technology can stand up to the tasting spoon.”
“Have you arranged for a substitute?” I imagined that would be difficult on such short notice. Between the high standards demanded by the position and the notorious reputations of lifelong kitchen hands making it next to impossible for them to pass a security screening, options were slim.
“I didn’t need to. He messaged from his sick bed to recommend his second for the post, Chef Vatel.”
If Boiardo had been the victim of sabotage it wasn’t a particularly successful one. Control of the kitchen remained firmly within the hand of his personally selected, Denaro-approved staff.
As if sensing my next question, Fox continued. “I’m not going to bother asking you to leave Vatel alone, even in consideration of the massive amount of catching up he has to do. However, as we take allergen concerns very seriously, I will request that you deposit your companion in your quarters before doing so. Unless, of course, you’d prefer for us to put him to sleep for you.”
CAT’s ears perked up, picking the veiled threat up from where I’d initially lost it in the captain’s officious argot.
“You’ll do what now?”
A hint of a mischievous grin played at the corners of Fox’s mouth. Coming from the composed officer, it was a veritable fireworks show of hilarity.
“Excuse me. Some of our non-human passengers experience considerable agitation and anxiety during the launch phase. We provide guests the opportunity to sedate their companions in order to avoid such unpleasantness.”
CAT relaxed. He’d bought Fox’s explanation, incapable of realizing that the old man was fucking with me for sport. My fists unclenched, but not before the captain noticed them.
“We offer the same service for our human passengers if you’re so inclined.”
I was not.