Patty bit the inside of her cheek, once more the outsider. Spring is a long time away, she thought. Leah was a lot younger. But she was just as smart as Patty, and didn't seem intimidated by anything Patty did or said.
It stung not to be included in the invitations. But Mom wouldn't let her go anyway. She'd want Patty studying for her entrance exams. Pilot program or no pilot program.
Until Leah grabbed her arm and said, “Have you ever seen an eagle's nest?”
“No,” Patty answered. “I never have.”
1800 Hours
Friday 8 December, 2062
PPCASS Huang Di
Under way
Min-xue gloried in his silent dinner with the first and fourth pilots. The fifth pilot was sleeping and the third was on the bridge, and all three men enjoyed a moment when they simply didn't have to speak, interact, or even meet the gaze of anyone else. He floated in a corner of the padded Pilot's Ready Room, chopsticking dumplings out of an insulated sack, and stopped with a pot sticker tucked into his cheek as the interior door irised open.
The door that led into the Captain's Ready Room.
He swallowed in haste — the unchewed bolus stretching his throat painfully — and wiped his mouth on his sleeve, tucking the chopsticks into the bag before he zipped it shut and stuck it to the bulkhead. The other two pilots came to attention, floating at odd angles.
Captain Wu paused inside the doorway and cast a scorching gaze over all of them. “Second Pilot,” he said, in a voice that carried. Drawn lines creased his cheeks; Min-xue straightened as best he could, pulling himself into the captain's orientation with one hand on a grab bar.
“Sir.”
Min-xue kicked off the wall once the captain turned away, and drifted toward him.
Wu drifted to the far bulkhead, turned, and stared out one of the Huang Di's tiny portholes. A single bright golden disk flared in the darkness: the Sun, limning the curve of Mars crimson beneath them. They'd accomplished something the Westerners hadn't — taming the Huang Di's drive for use in-system. The trick was microsecond bursts calculated in advance, and then desperate corrections with the attitude rockets, gentling the velocity before the starship could impact a planetary body.
Not precise.
But effective.
“Second Pilot,” the captain said, without turning from the window. “A shuttle will be arriving from our interests in the asteroid belt shortly. We'll be bringing a cargo back to Earth.”
“Captain?”
“A load of nickel-iron. I wish you to relieve the third pilot for the duration. It may be tricky, and you're the best with the maneuvering jets.”
“Captain.” The other two pilots didn't speak, but Min-xue could feel their restrained curiosity even as they pretended deafness. “I'm honored.”
Wu shrugged and turned to face the pilots, putting the shoulder of the planet at his back, stars drifting in his hair. “Also, I'd appreciate it if you'd restrict your off-duty reading to more approved writers. That's all.” He pushed off from the bulkhead and drifted, quite accurately, toward the interconnecting door. Min-xue watched him go, wondering.
Why does he want the whole ship to know that what we're picking up is asteroidal iron?
Why are they wasting the Huang Di ferrying iron ore at all?
9:00 AM
Sunday 10 December, 2062
Office of the Chief Medical Examiner
Hartford, Connecticut
Kuai watched with amusement as Sally dug around in the bottom of an insulating carry sack and came up with a breakfast burrito and a cup of coffee. “They were out of ham so I got you Canadian bacon.”
“Like there's a difference.” Kuai took it and set it on the edge of her desk, away from the interface plate. “How does the day look?”
“Paperwork,” Sally said, and Kuai blew out around a groan. “Dr. Bates is in today. You're off the hook for autopsies.”
“Can't you arrange a nice triple homicide or something else to keep him busy?”
“You have pixels to push, Madam Hua. It's all in your in-box—” The bag swung in Sally's hand, rustling faintly.
Kuai could see the icon blinking unread messages on the corner of her interface. She didn't wear contacts at work; too much chance of infection in this environment. Her burrito reeked of grease, nauseating her and sparking her appetite all at once. Bring fruit to work, she reminded herself for the third time that day.
“I'll bring you a bagel at eleven if you're good.”
“Hell. Do I get a potty break at least?” But she tapped her in-box open obediently, barely noticing the interface's chill.
Sally blew brown strands out of her eyes and smiled. It plumped her hollow cheeks and made her suddenly pretty. Sally, unlike Kuai, had been both a uniformed and plainclothes police officer before accepting the appointment as Kuai's executive assistant. “You have got to be the only woman on Earth who would rather be up to your elbows in a nice stinky floater than sitting behind a desk. Which reminds me: any leads on that triple from September yet?” Sally also knew Kuai had adopted the case as half hobby and half obsession. A cop was a cop. Even an ex-cop. Sometimes especially an ex-cop.
“We have a scenario that accounts for all three deaths. The officer — Kozlowski — and the bounty hunter Yin follow Casey into the steam tunnel. The bounty hunter was operating out of the North End under the alias Bobbi Yee, by the way, and had been for some time. So they're both locals. There's a fight. The cop takes a bullet from the Unitek employee — Barbara Casey. Casey had been shot at long range, not enough to pierce her body armor but she had some pretty nasty blunt trauma ventrally. Yin and Casey mix it up, one thing leads to another, and they're in the wrong place when the steam plant vents. End of an ugly story, nobody to prosecute.”
“I can hear the except coming.”
“We recovered a bullet from the sewer wall. It didn't match a weapon at the scene. And Yin and Kozlowski were seen in the company of Dwayne ‘Razorface' MacDonald earlier that night.”
“The crime boss?”
“The same.” Kuai reached for her burrito and started to unwrap it, although she wanted the coffee more. The acid would make her regret that, though, if she didn't buffer first. It was either eat or start putting milk in her coffee. And that would be a fate worse than death. “Moreover, we've got other complications. It looks like an outside supplier was giving MacDonald's enemies access to high-powered weapons. Guns manufactured by a Korean Unitek subsidiary and reported stolen some year previous. And a North End fixture — a sort of information broker, street doctor, and auto mechanic type, if you can picture that — went missing around the same time. Crossed the border at Niagara with Barbara Casey — then Casey returned to the U.S. and got killed.”
“Have we found any other links?”
“Her—” Kuai stopped herself. “Excuse me. ‘An anonymous tipster' turned over the documents I had you fact-check and forward to Gary Orsin. The auto mechanic's name… want to guess?”
“Kozlowski?”
“Genevieve Casey.”
“Huh.”
“Yeah, that's what I said. Guess where she works now?”
Sally's answer was cut off as the interface beeped a priority code. Kuai glanced down at it — mail from Judge Orsin at Hartford Criminal Justice Court — and felt a grin start to tug her lower lip taut. About damned time. She opened it with a twist of her hand before the smile got away from her, on the off chance that it was a denial.