Chapter 79: Entry
“Are you sure this is going to work?”
Rudy estimated it was about the ten thousandth time Chloe had asked since he'd explained his plan.
“Yes, Clo,” he said with what he thought was remarkable restraint. “I'm sure.”
Considering the Crimson Phoenix's reputation, Rudy thought, 'remarkable restraint' had become his watchword. He sure couldn't imagine the version of himself from a year ago emerging untouched from four emotionally charged weeks alone on a transport with a pair of nubile young women who had both propositioned him at least once in their lives!
Still, even his newfound saintly patience had its limits.
Chloe was coming dangerously close to pushing them with that stupid question. For Principle's sake, it wasn't like he hadn't explained his plan this time.
“I just don't feel comfortable trusting Stephan,” Chloe said. “Frankly, it's kind of surprising you do, Rudy.”
“Milissa,” Rudy asked, “what does a mechaneer-aristocrat do when he yields in battle?”
“Well, pretty much whatever the victor asks, Rudolf, but –”
“See, Clo? From the mouths of babes.”
“Um,” Milissa and Chloe both said.
Rudy sighed. “Listen, ladies, I'm trusting Steph for two very good reasons. First, Mili, he doesn't want you to get hurt, so he won't do anything to jeopardize you.” He nodded to the Kyrillos girl, then turned to Chloe. “And second, he doesn't want you to fall into the senate's hands, so he wouldn't want to screw over anybody but me.”
“Unless he has us shot on arrival,” Chloe said.
“Well, yeah, but that's where everyone's favorite parasitic not-organism comes in,” Rudy said.
“Everyone's favorite what?”
“Your erinyes,” Rudy explained, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
Chloe glared back at him. “It is not a parasite, Rudy. Principle! I swear, you're just jealous.”
“It gets a hell of a lot closer to you than I do, that's for sure,” he muttered. He blinked. Hell. Was she right? Did he actually envy the silver mecha, or whatever it was? It had to be the lamest romantic rival ever.
On the other hand, it got to exist attached to Chloe's skin. Everything her spacer morality had said he didn't get near, the erinyes did. Twenty four hours a day. And it was alive, or something like alive.
Not to mention it kept them apart.
Rudy scowled. “Jealous of the erinyes. Principle!”
A warning light appeared over the Magpie's main screen. Chloe spared it a glance, then danced her fingers across the console before her. The gravitically-distorted starscape around them resolved into another much like it. This one was ringed by conventionally glowing stars, though, which no compression tunnel ever was from the inside.
They had arrived.
Chloe and Milissa both drew in deep breaths.
Rudy smiled at the girls. He'd been to Etemenos before, so the sight of it didn't hit him quite like it did a first-timer.
It was still damned impressive, though. If the Errant Magpie's main screen hadn't been zoomed out far enough to take in the surrounding stars, Etemenos's incredibly powerful shield would have filled their view like an inverted compression tunnel. The world-city itself wasn't even visible except as hints of starlight distorted in ways it wouldn't be without solid surfaces to reflect off of, and only a computer could identify those.
Etemenos was invisible, yet it cast a shadow over the entire galaxy.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
It occurred to Rudy that he'd never been to the world-city as an enemy before. In that light, adjectives like 'impressive' and 'awesome' bowed out in favor of ones like 'terrifying.'
Taking on the world-city was more than even an Imperial could manage.
Fortunately, Rudy's plan, which, if he was being perfectly honest, was at least as much Stephan's plan at the stage they were about to execute, didn't call for taking on anything bigger than a custom's agent's wits.
“This is it, ladies,” he said. “You ready, Chloe?”
“Just like my dad taught me,” she said. Now she came across all cool confidence. He'd think she'd come up with the plan herself.
Rudy trusted her to play her role better than he did his.
“Milissa?”
“Don't say anything, keep my head down, and if somebody asks me a question, I'm new here and hadn't they better ask you, Captain?”
Rudy gave her a thumbs-up.
Hopefully, neither would have to play her role, and Rudy's would consist of a couple of lines. It occurred to him that he should have given Chloe the lead. He might match her for deceptive body language and trump her easily in combat, but when it came to carrying off a persona or running a bluff, she was definitely his better.
Hopefully it wouldn't matter.
As if on cue, the communications suite beneath her hands beeped. She looked down at it. “We're being hailed by the port authority,” she said. “Is that good?”
“Doing fine,” Rudy said. “Put 'em on.”
The customs official who appeared looked bored. In fact, he didn't even glance up to see who was on the other side of the screen. “Transmit landing authorization and await a flight path,” he said, shuffling something beneath the lip of the screen. Slowly, he looked up, and added a tired, “Please.”
“Already sent,” Rudy said. He grinned at the guy.
“Thanks, buddy,” the customs official said. “It's about time somebody had their information in order.”
“What's the problem?” Chloe drawled, with an edge of impatience Rudy assumed was as fake as her groundling accent. Both sounded plenty believable.
“The Etemenos Cup, missy. Most of these damn tourist ships wouldn't know authorization from their...” He glanced at the two young women and shrugged in place of finishing his sentence. Heh. Rudy hadn't expected to run into an honest to goodness gentlemen amidst the Fed bureaucracy. Maybe Marcel was rubbing off on them. “And the mechaneers are even worse! Principle! Think they own the place just 'cause they're pretty good at a game. Wouldn't last a second in a real fight, huh?”
“Ain't that the truth,” Chloe said. She rolled an eye in Rudy's direction.
Milissa looked like she was going to choke stifling her giggle, but, thankfully, she chose breathing problems over customs problems.
“We got a flight path here, man?” Rudy drummed his fingers on the captain's chair. “I'm kind of on a schedule.”
“Keep your shirt on,” the customs official said. “You can wait in line with all the rest.”
Chloe glanced back at Rudy. Her head lolled a little as she cocked it. “He ain't serious, Boss?”
“Can't be,” Rudy said. He let a little of his annoyance slip into his voice as he addressed the customs official again. “Check those codes again.”
“From ignorant to pushy,” the man muttered. He swallowed the last bit of 'pushy,' though.
Slowly, he looked up, his fleshy face pale. “Um.”
“Sure we have to wait in line?” Rudy asked, faux-sweetly.
“O-of course not, sir. You'll get your path right away.”
Chloe took it philosophically. “Miracles ever cease, huh?”
“Transmitting now,” the customs official said. “Do you have that? You're, uh, cleared to land, sir.”
Rudy looked to Chloe.
She nodded lazily.
“Thanks for your cooperation,” Rudy told the customs official. “I'll put in a good word for you, man.”
A bead of sweat rolled down the guy's pate. “Er, d-don't bother. No word at all is word enough for me. Sir.”
“Suit yourself,” Rudy said, shrugging.
The custom's official's face vanished from the screen, replaced by a projected flight path of overlapping colored boxes that seemed to lead into the distorted mass that was Etemenos.
“That,” Chloe said, “should not have been so easy.”
“Nah, we nailed it,” Rudy said. “Stephan's codes helped, too, I guess. And what was that accent?”
“Prentice system,” Chloe said, half-apologetically. “It seemed like the kind of place a girl would run away to join the mob from.”
Prentice, wherever it was, hosted no major tournaments, so Rudy couldn't say. If Chloe thought a girl would run away from her home there, he figured it had to be pretty damn stuck in the mud. Either that, or libertine as hell.
He watched her shift the ship in its flight path and kept grinning. She'd gone from novice to master over the course of their trip; her hands gave a virtuoso performance on the touchpads. If the Magpie came within ten meters of the edge of any of the colored boxes, Rudy would have been shocked.
They passed through what had looked like a pinprick hole on Etemenos's shields, but turned out to be wide enough to fit a hundred Errant Magpies abreast. It took them a few minutes to clear the layers upon layers of compressed space.
Then, suddenly, they were through.
The Magpie burned to a stop as Chloe's hand slipped palm-down. She and Milissa stared, wide-eyed, open-mouthed, as the world-city at the heart of human space unfolded above them. Layer upon rotating layer of 'land,' packed even more to the brim with mecha and ships than usual because of the upcoming Etemenos Cup.
Rudy never considered asking the girls not to gawk.
Why bother? Even after being to Etemenos dozens of times, he still did.