“Damn straight we’ll starve. Another taco?”
“Sure.”
Delagarza noted how Cooke talked about “we” now. A couple months ago, Cooke thought of himself as a stranded tourist, and Delagarza was sure that Derbies would’ve agreed. Today, the two men were buddies.
Shared hardship has a way of uniting people. Delagarza finished his taco and started another. His mouth burnt so badly he could barely taste the meat, but that was by design, since it was probably a 3d printed krill-based foam construct with a drop of meat-flavoring.
In the distance, a new security patrol strolled past Taco Empire’s extended terrace and stopped. One of the officers, a woman with shoulders as wide as Delagarza’s torso, gave them the stink-eye and went to them.
“Here we fucking go,” whispered Cooke. Delagarza kicked the man’s shin to shut him up.
He offered the security officer one of his best smiles. “How’s it going, officer?”
“IDs,” the woman demanded.
“Is there any problem?” Cooke asked.
The woman’s eyes narrowed. “Dunno. Is there?”
“Dunno,” said Cooke.
Reiner’s fucking sake, he’s still too green for his own good, Delagarza thought. He kicked Cooke’s shin again, which earned him an irate glance.
“Here, officer,” Delagarza said, connecting his wristband to hers and sending her his registration number. “Of course there isn’t any problem. My friend here is in a foul mood because he’s a wimp when it comes to jalapeño. Cooke, show the officer your ID, don’t act like a child.”
Cooke gave him a pissed off look, but Delagarza’s warning glance made him comply. The officer checked both IDs with a poker expression, then looked up to examine them.
“A newcomer, huh? Have you gotten yourself into trouble, Cooke, Nick?”
“No,” said Cooke. “I’m just a regular guy.”
The officer and him glared at each other. Cooke broke first.
“Right. Keep it that way, citizens,” the woman said, and went back to her patrol.
“What the hell was that?” Cooke asked, fuming.
“She’s just bored, is all,” Delagarza explained. “The enforcers are having all the fun hunting down the rebels and their families.”
“How can you—of all people—be so easygoing about this?” Cooke snapped.
Delagarza finished his third taco. “Why shouldn’t I? I have nothing to hide. You ought to take it a bit easier, Cooke. Taco Empire is not the hill you want to make your last stand on. Save that righteous fury for when you need it. No offense, Derbies.”
“None taken,” said Derbies. The man laughed, treating Delagarza and Cooke to a row of yellow teeth.
SAVE for his occasional forays with Cooke to keep an eye on the outside world, Delagarza watched the days trickle by holed up in his apartment.
Hirsen had been silent since the Vortex made its appearance. For what little Delagarza knew about his mental landlord, the agent waited for something to change. That something being, the EIF’s arrival.
If they even come at all, thought Delagarza. Vortex couldn’t have arrived when it did by coincidence. Maybe Hirsen’s rebellion had ended before it began.
The smoke of his cigarette spiraled into the living room’s air recycling unit. Outside, people were dying. It was a discreet death, the kind that you barely notice except if you know where to look. Enforcer death squads breaking into people’s homes in the middle of the night, taking them out with sonic batons, and then disappearing them into black vans. No one saw them again after that.
The rebels last stand wasn’t even televised. Delagarza wondered if Kayoko was still alive. It was amazing how all her money and connections meant little to a giant spaceship. Man’s might meant little to the gods above.
The door buzzed and announced a visitor. “Charleton, Jamilia,” said the digital voice, and showed a holo of Charleton’s face standing right outside. She looked worried.
“Let her in,” said Delagarza. He tossed his cigarette into the ashtray and had the living room spray itself with a minty aroma to mask the nicotine stink. The door unlocked itself.
Charleton entered and immediately frowned. “You know air freshener only makes cigarette smoke worse, right?”
“What brings you around, Jamilia? It’s almost past curfew.”
She plopped down into Delagarza’s single sofa. “We need to talk.”
“Nothing good ever came of that.”
She rolled her eyes at him, but there was a hint of a smile on her lips. “It’s serious, Sam.”
Delagarza straightened. “Alright, shoot.”
She opened a holo screen from her wristband and connected it to Delagarza’s home network. He cloned the screen and took a good look at it.
“It’s from those travel logs inside the Shota-M,” he said.
“I’ve studied them for a while now,” she explained. “There’s something about them that didn’t make sense, remember? I think I found out what it is.”
Delagarza eyed the logs and waited for her to go on.
“Know how Alcubierre travel takes several months between star systems?” Charleton asked. “What’s the longest recorded trip duration—without stopping to refuel?”
Delagarza had no fucking idea.
Nine months, two weeks, three days, Daneel Hirsen whispered at the back of his mind.
“Nine months, two weeks, three days,” Delagarza said.
It was a direct path from Jagal to Pothos Star System, practically Edge’s frontier-to-frontier travel. It was made by a private courier carrying the news of the Monsoon’s destruction to a Pothos-based financial conglomerate that could lose trillions if the news reached its adversaries first…
Delagarza performed the mental equivalent of shushing someone.
“That’s right,” she said. “Almost a year. And that was way back then. Modern ships can, theoretically, make the trip in six months.”
She gestured at the travel log, inviting him to reach the same conclusion she had. Delagarza humored her, knowing it was pointless to try. “I can’t read this, Jamilia. I’m not an astrophysicist.”
What about you? Delagarza thought inwardly. Hirsen did the subconscious equivalent of shrugging and looking the other way.
“I’m not, either,” she said, rolling her eyes again, “I just picked up some tricks of the trade from Outlander’s travelers.”
The log grew in size in Delagarza’s hands as she walked next to him and handled the holo with expert motions.
“We can follow Newgen’s route since it started,” she said, pointing out a bunch of coordinates and times at the start of the holo. “Here. The ship’s registry says it’s a luxury passenger liner, by the way, not related to Newgen at all. If you hadn’t told me about it, I would’ve had no idea. You can see how, at first, it follows a scenic route. Leaves from Demarus Star System, reaches Sadidus Star System and spends a month there. Leaves for Parmenides after that.”
If Newgen had wanted to hide their ship as a luxury liner, going to Parmenides had been a nice touch. It was a deep space station founded by a casino conglomerate. It exploited a legal vacuum during the beginning of the Edge’s colonization to answer to no official government. Technically, there was no constitution in deep space, as it was no-man's-land. Realistically, Parmenides’ survived by virtue of its immense cash flow and its fame as the favored retreat for people way too rich for Las Vegas.
“Doesn’t sound like Isabella’s mother suffered one ounce from the Monsoon tragedy,” Delagarza pointed out.