Speaking to my next contact meant returning to Ika’s backroom data-fortress. This job required two hackers, with slightly different skillsets, in two different locations. Mr. P had specified that the off-planet member of the team would be someone he’d recommend. Her name was Ana, and she insisted on a voice-only interview, which made getting to know her tricky, especially given her love of the local Martian patois, calling me dost and saying shi instead of yes. Most people I’d meet, correctly identifying me as an outsider, stuck to English or Mandarin rather than the mash-up of English, Mandarin, Russian, and a variety of East Asian languages that all the cool kids spoke here. And she was a kid—she sounded appallingly young. I tried to see past the Martian dialect to identify her original accent; not mainland Chinese, but somewhere around there. Taiwanese? Or even a Korean; there might be a few of them here, same as there were Americans. Perhaps she was on Phobos: the Pacific Rim Consortium, who ran that particular moon, enjoyed damaging Chinese interests. Or she was somewhere on one of the other stations above us. Maybe even a young and rebellious Deimon sticking it to the man. I just had to trust Mr. P had picked wisely when he went for a teen in space.
Assuming she was what she sounded like. As I walked to the final meeting of the day, I considered the likelihood that Ana and possibly Mr. P were not real people at all, but constructs voiced by a LAI. Then again, why use a Limited Artificial Intellect when I might suss I was talking to a machine? Just use masking software on a real human, as appeared to be the case here. And obviously they weren’t Unlimited AIs. Not even the Deimons in their little bit of orbital semi-anarchy had managed—or perhaps dared—to recreate the perfect storm that led, briefly, to the only true AI. I doubted they’d be foolish enough to try, given how that worked out last time. But I was overthinking this. All that mattered was that everyone played their part and the job went off smoothly.
The third team member who Ika had already vetted was Nico. His role fell somewhere between Xiao-Fei’s and Ana’s, though he’d be working locally, on the ground. We met in one of the larger plazas, where drones flew delicacies from the nearby food court to diners’ tables. Nico was there before me. We both ordered iced tea. He had mixed Malaysian and African heritage; he came across as laid-back and friendly, though his file said he was ex-military, an early experience as a conscript in southeast Asia he wasn’t proud of. “I’m here now, living a new life on Mars,” he said with a smile. My only concern was that he might have exaggerated his skills, as he struck me as a little too eager to please. Then again, much of his work would be done in advance of the job. Plus, I was looking for a mix of competencies hard to find in this environment and though I might have covered all the bases with two people taking on this role, I wanted to keep the numbers down.
The following day I met up with the final team member; our late addition, doing the job Shiv would have done, had he lived long enough.
The individual in question wished to be known as Gregori. He was Marineris-born and to go by the quality of the hotel he was staying at he wasn’t in this for the money. I suspected Gregori was the rebellious playboy son of one of the old Russian families. I wondered at this, given the uneasy relations between China and Russia here and on Earth. But, though he was Martian-born, as a first-time visitor to Olympus he fulfilled Mr. P’s preference for using non-locals where possible, and nothing Ika managed to turn up gave us cause for suspicion.
We met in a coffee bar which, in the way of such offworld establishments, mainly sold overpriced coffee substitutes. He was late, which was a strike against him, and when he arrived he threw himself into the seat opposite me with a grin.
I tried to hold onto the fact that he was tardy, arrogant, and might have dubious connections, but mainly I tried to remember to breathe. He was in his early twenties, with sharp yet asymmetric features and immaculate blond hair. I have a thing for blonds. He’d look fantastic in Russian traditional costume, on the back of a black stallion. Were Cossacks blond? Who cared? He could ride across the steppes and pillage my village any time. Yes, breathe. I looked away from those lovely sapphire eyes and started the interview, only to have him interrupt as I was asking how long he’d been in Olympus.
“I get to drive and to pilot, yes?”
“Yes, you’ll need both skills.”
“Good, good. Do you like to drive fast, Ms. C?” I’d taken a leaf out of Shiv’s book and insisted my team used my title and first letter of my surname; hearing even part of my name from this young man made me feel a certain warmth. Stay focused, and breathe.
“We’re not talking high performance vehicles here, Gregori.”
“No? But it’ll still be fun.”
I managed to keep to my script for the rest of the interview. He flirted outrageously the whole time. I wasn’t sure if this was an act for me or his default setting. Frankly, I didn’t care.
I did ask one direct question I’d avoided with the others, it generally being considered bad form amongst career criminals. “Why do you want to do this job?”
“Like I said, it’ll be fun, da?”
I believed him. He really was that shallow. How charming. “Let’s hope so. I’m guessing, given where you’re staying, the money is not the issue.”
“It is a good hotel. Spacious rooms.”
“Really? I’d be interested in seeing that for myself.”
“You like to see my room? I would love to show you.”
“Lead on.”
Two hundred or so years ago, back when humans first ventured into space, the idea of zero-gee sex used to be a Thing. It was meant to be exotic, special, out-of-this-world. Another example of how dumb our ancestors were. Leaving aside the chance that one or more partners would spend the session trying not to throw up, the laws of the universe do not bend just so a girl can get herself the right level of friction and degree of thrust to really hit the spot.
Low-gee sex with someone who knows what they’re doing is, however, a-maz-ing. And Gregori knew what he was doing. Part of me wanted to stay all night—or what was left of it when I finally surfaced long enough to check the time—but that’s not how I operate. Gregori, bless him, appeared genuinely surprised and sorry when I left.
Two days later myself, Nico, and Gregori took a trip into the tunnels. Another key to success in a job like this, besides compartmentalisation, is diversion. Lifting the Eye was the simple part of the job; getting away with it would be the real challenge, and doing so without being caught was the reason we were being paid so much.
The final factor for any hands-on job is practice, although we were limited in what could be practiced in advance.
Ana, the team member with the fullest picture—including details on the target, so Mr. P had better be right to trust her—would be doing whatever prep she needed on her own, high up in her orbital castle.
I was confident that Xiao-Fei knew how to deal with the on-site security we’d run into on the night. And before we went in I’d give him the full lowdown on what was required, including the additional and rather unexpected part of the snatch.
Which left me, Nico, and Gregori to run through the getaway, insofar as we could. We visited a part of Olympus most tourists avoided, the barely used maze of first-generation tunnels dug by the original tunnelworms—the LAI-brained excavators invented by the Levi-Mathesons—along with so much we take for granted today, from spidersilk digesters to brain-deplaquing. Whatever I, or anyone else, might say about the LMs, they were the only non-corporate entity who got rich enough to buy a moon. And for all their high ideals, they kept their fortune by use of expedient cutouts on their biotech which activate, rendering said tech useless, unless it gets regular catalytic boosts or similar tailored updates. These are sent out free from the Deimos labs… provided you’d paid the patent fees back to the founders’ descendants.