Chapter Five
Wallside
It was very late – or early, could be either really – when B reached their tiny apartment, perched with all its drab neighbors above the coldest and cheapest parts of wallside. Wet fog crept up the sides of the building as she fumbled with the lock. To her surprise, she was greeted by a nod from Apex, clearly still wide awake and seated on the faded carpeting by the tv, a large book in his lap. Oddly, one of Oreo’s dented saucepans, full of dirt with several of the same phlox from the ruin planted in it, sat next to him on an upturned cardboard box. The curtains had all been shut, and the flickering screen was the only light in the apartment, shifting blue glow chasing bright shadows across the ceiling and the walls. Oreo’s sprawled form on the couch didn’t seem bothered by it in the slightest, face buried in one arm and the other dangling off the cushions. The half-empty pan of fresh brownies on the floor nearby had almost certainly been mostly eaten by her, not their guest. It was her favorite comfort food, after all.
Apex’s head was tilted just slightly, listening to the very faint sound coming from the tv. His magpie was a dark round shape snuggled into the hair draped across his shoulder, feathers fluffed as it slept in the slight chill.
“Can you actually hear that?” she asked curiously, stepping quietly over the discarded clothes on the floor so as not to wake Oreo, reaching for the little magnetic transfer disc that would recharge her. It was not quite loud enough for B herself to hear clearly. He nodded, still listening.
His voice was barely louder than the tv itself when he spoke. “I have been monitoring this device for public updates on the raid, as Oreo asked me to before she went to sleep. I cannot say I understand everything, but I have a much broader grasp of your situation now.”
“You’re not tired yourself?”
“I do not need sleep,” the man confirmed. “Was your foray successful? I am eager to know the whereabouts and condition of my brother.”
“Yeah, about that…” Bee considered how best to phrase the disaster Nadir had gotten himself into.
Might as well just tell him. “Apparently one of the first people they sent in to talk to him was a previously accused but acquitted murderer, and he killed the guy. Accused him of two more murders while he was at it, and then went right back to ignoring everything, including the bullets they shot at him. So instead of leaving him wallside with everyone else where you could just go port to him, they shipped him offplanet, to the high-security prison ship for magic users.”
“…I take it from the way you say that that it will be much more difficult to follow him than anticipated?”
“You have no idea,” B said. “The Utopia was diverted to Sol’s neighborhood just to pick up Songbird, and then they sent your brother with him for good measure. They probably won’t jump again immediately, but the whole point of the prison ships is that they’re constantly on the move, to make escape attempts difficult. They’re not for your run-of-the-mill burglars and the like.”
Apex’s face contorted in an unhappy grimace. “Meaning we have a limited amount of time to retrieve them before it becomes even more difficult to track and rescue them?”
“Basically,” she said, noting that Apex had automatically included Songbird in his calculations.
He traced the patterns on the cover of the book he was holding thoughtfully – had he managed to teleport all the way back to the ruin from here? It looked ancient, it couldn’t be theirs – then said, “Your Oreo still believes that doing nothing is the best idea. I cannot say I agree, yet I have no experience with this sort of travel or even the means to do so.”
“Actually,” B said, calculating what that book implied about his teleportation range, “Based on where it’s currently sitting, I think we could get you there ourselves. But the hopper technically belongs to Oreo, so I’ll have to talk her into it.”
Apex raised his eyebrows. “Is that wise? From what she said, you are both expected at your regular work for the foreseeable future, though she did tell me she had asked for today to be excluded before she slept.”
She shrugged. “With what I found in the files, I think it’d be best anyway. I should wake her up so I only have to explain everything once, though.”
Turning his head to regard Oreo’s sleeping form, he said calmly, “There is no need for you to trouble yourself.” Moments later she bolted upright with a startled gasp, clutching her chest through her t-shirt where she’d been marked.
“Oh shards that’s cold! What the fuck, dude?”
“You requested I wake you after Bee returned,” Apex said, raising a single eyebrow.
“I meant like shaking my shoulder, not dropping an ice cube down my shirt!” She rubbed at the spot on her chest again. “Gahhhh, I can still feel it. Please never, ever do that again.”
“Your preference is noted,” Apex said, not the slightest hint of remorse in his voice. Was that a tiny smile quirking the corner of his mouth? It was gone in seconds, but B got the impression that he was really more amused than anything.
Oreo hadn’t missed the smile either, and eyed Apex suspiciously as she reached over the back of the couch to slap the light switch, saying, “Well, whatever, I’m awake now. Fill me in. What’ve we got?” She added, turning to the kitchen, “Coffee. Now, please.”
B held up a finger. “I think the most important thing is that some of the planning files I downloaded reference an unnamed collaborator.”
“Oh, fuck,” Oreo said, reaching for the steaming cup of coffee her little automated kitchen bot was tapping across the kitchen counter to bring her.
“Eloquently put,” B said brightly, before continuing with her summary. “There’s that, and PK managing to skate under the radar for now, and there’s Songbird and Nadir being sent to a prison ship.”
“Well,” Oreo said after a long pause, cradling the battered cup in both hands, “There goes any chance of spooky getting his brother back.
“Both him and Songbird were put in maximum security, in case you were feeling any optimism.” Better to get the bad news out of the way first, so Oreo’d have time to get used to it.
“However, like I said, they don’t seem to have realized who Peekaboo is – she’s been sent to a nonmagical wallside prison, barely any security. I don’t know what that tells us about our collaborator – anyone who could leak the market’s location would definitely know the market’s director by mask.”
Looking around, she spotted the usual worn tablet underneath the open bag of chocolate chips on the counter, and headed for it. A few of them rolled out of the bag as she snagged the pad. “It’s probably better to pretend that we think she’s no one important too, as long as they’re ignoring her. That’s what I’m going to tell our chairman when I forward all these files to him – and yes, I’m going to, because I think the underground at least needs to know there’s a traitor, instead of wasting their time searching records. It could be basically anyone.”
“Except you and me, and spooky makes three. Plus the prisoners.”
“Here’s the thing though,” she said, nodding. “PK’s not the only one that knows a lot about the underground. So does Songbird. He was always traveling to the other earthside branches when they needed medical things, including ours, and he’s bound to know more than he should. And they’re definitely interested in him right now, and we know for certain after that raid that they’re still trying to locate the rest of us before the legislation passes.”
Oreo rolled her eyes, taking a sip. “It’s not like he’s gonna talk to them, he’s got nerves of steel if he was spying for us – for like a decade, I might add. I looked him up last night after they started arguing about whether or not he’s broken his oath of service on the news.”
Apex said, from his corner by the tv, “He can’t have been your only healer, can he? It’s not that rare of a talent, and is easily learned, if not mastered.”
One hand flapping in denial, Oreo sat up. “LORD no, no no no, he’s got an apprentice and she’s even got her own apprentices and everything. But it’s hard to find a doctor that is: willing to treat the underground, and an experienced healer, and has actual medical training, let alone the kind of highly specific surgical knowledge he’s got.” She wiggled her four raised fingers meaningfully. “He just gets a lot of work, that’s all. He can’t have been sleeping much, the way he was running around.”
“The point is,” B said, taking back control of the conversation, “not only does he have a lot of potentially dangerous knowledge, they’re also planning on experimenting on him. I have a list of everything they’ve currently scheduled for him – here, look.” She handed the tablet with Songbird’s file to Oreo, scrolled exactly to the right point for her to get a good look.
Oreo took it casually in her free hand, then as she began scanning the lines her face paled, and she sat up straight. “Oh.” The further she scrolled the more her lips curled in disgust, and she looked like she might vomit. “Oh, my god.” She held the tablet away from her as if it could bite and swore, “Bloody fucking shards of earth, they can’t be serious.”
B just looked at Oreo and said nothing, letting the tablet speak for itself. Apex, on the other hand, said, “Enlighten me, please.”
Oreo shook her head and said simply, “You don’t wanna know. You really don’t wanna know.”
He frowned, then a loop of his hair snaked its way over to touch her bare foot. Apparently this let him get some sense of what she was looking at, because his eyebrows shot up so far they nearly fell off his face. “Disturbing,” was his only comment.
“Yeah, so that’s what he’s looking at right now,” B said, hands on her hips. “It may not be intended to make him talk – but I could see it happening. Personally, I think leaving anyone there to face that would be criminal, even if he didn’t actually know anything.”
Oreo eyed her half-empty coffee cup unhappily, then set it down, still looked faintly greenish as she said, “You make an excellent point, but it’s not like we can do anything about it. We’ll have to see if we can’t get the underground branches to put some hustle in their step and maybe mount a rescue – one of the branches has to have a decent spaceship somewhere.”
“That might work, if the collaborator doesn’t have any say in it. But we don’t know who that is, and even if they don’t I can bet you pennies to pounds that the rest of the underground is going to tie themselves in so many knots over the situation they won’t get anything done. If we want anything done in time, we’ll have to do it ourselves.”
“You are absolutely correct, Bu- Bee,” Oreo said, burying her face in her hands. “Of course you are.” She sighed, resigned. “Please tell me you’ve thought of something to do, rather than just delighting in crushing my dreams of not being involved.”
If B had been capable of grinning, she would have. The tiny pert smile her molded lips managed to curve into would have to do instead. “I have, in fact. Our little hopper can jump not quite three parsecs – it barely qualifies as jump-capable, but because they diverted the Utopia near Sol, I think we can planet-hop over to it.” She snagged another smaller tablet from the kitchen counter. “Depending on how far Apex can teleport, we might be able to just bring him close enough to get on board, grab the prisoners, and port back to your mark. The hopper wouldn’t even need to stay in the same place to wait for him, since you’d be his point of reference.”
“I knew it,” Oreo muttered. “I just knew it was gonna involve something stupid.”
“Oh, hush, you. You do stupid things all the time.” B was busily pulling up a star chart of the near-sol neighborhood.
“According to the files I decrypted, the Utopia is currently located in EZ Aquarii – it’s a triple star system with no planets. Our hopper is so small we could probably hide it by one of the stars inside their orbits, and they wouldn’t notice us in all the glare and radiation.”
“That sounds like an extremely difficult feat of piloting to pull off with three gravitational wells to deal with.”
“I’m sure that’s why they picked the system in the first place,” B said airily. “That, and it being uninhabited. Don’t worry, I believe in you. You’ve always been better at spaceflight than planetary flight.”
Oreo shot her a look from under her eyebrows, clearly unamused. B continued as if she hadn’t seen it. “Getting there will take a few hops, and we’ll need to recharge and refuel after each one, but if you look here,” she said, highlighting the systems in question, “we can hop from Alpha Centauri, to the Ross 154 research station, to Eib Alpha, and from there we can easily reach EZ Aquarii and still have enough power to jump back to Eib Alpha afterward.” Oreo’s nose wrinkled in distaste as she leaned over the tablet to examine the route.
“Isn’t Eib Alpha a domed moon base? Bijou de Lacaille is about the same distance from the Ross and Aquarii systems, and’s an actual planet with an atmosphere to boot.”
“We’re not going on vacation, Oreo. Eib Alpha has both a branch of the underground and a military base on it, and we can use the time while we refuel there to double-check that the prison ship hasn’t moved before we jump out into the middle of nowhere.”
“Okay, fair enough, but Bijou also has a branch of the underground, a bigger one, and it’s citizen patrolled with no military presence. If we’re bringing fugitives back with us, that’s clearly a better place for them to hide.”
“That’s… a good point,” B had to admit. “But Bijou is expensive, and we might have to stay for a while, so we’d be able to stretch things further on Eib Alpha.”
“I don’t like it.” Oreo folded her arms, as Apex stood up from his corner to join them by the counter, gently removing his sleepy magpie from his shoulder to let it nestle down on the floor instead.
He frowned at the tablet, and B realized he was having the same problem as before – he couldn’t see the chart. She hastily picked up a few of the spilled chocolate chips and placed them on the tablet on the systems in question for him, to a grateful nod. Oreo continued her argument by tapping emphatically on the chip for Eib Alpha.
“You don’t see tourism brochures for ‘the fantastic moons of Epsilon Indi’ for a reason, and that’s because the places are so regulated you can’t sneeze without a permit. Hiding fugitives there would be a nightmare, even if it was just until we could get them off. You know the hopper can’t do more than two jumps in a row, so we’d be stuck there until it recharged.”
Apex, head uncomfortably pressed against the ceiling and one hand braced against it for balance, asked, “If the one place is a good option for double-checking everything before the rescue attempt, and the other is a good option for hiding afterward, why not simply use both?” He added, leaning over the tablet to examine the chocolate chips, “Might it not also look suspicious were we to head out from one place to nowhere in particular, then turn and come right back? We could instead pretend we were heading straight from this Eib Alpha to the final destination, Bijou.”
They all paused, looking at the chart for a moment. “I do have to file a flight plan before we leave,” B said thoughtfully. “If we said our ultimate goal was Bijou, we actually could just say our purpose for the trip was vacation. It would make an excellent cover story.” She tapped her fingers against her facial shell as her mind raced to explore the new possibilities. “And even though the hopper will take longer to recharge after two jumps in a row, if we’re supposed to be staying for a while it won’t be too suspicious for it to stay longer in the charging bay.”
“On the subject of vacation,” Oreo said, arms still folded, “What exactly are we gonna do about work? It’s not like we’ve been planning this for months and have things all set up.”
“Apex said you’d asked for today off, since yesterday didn’t really count. They’re pretty good about that, and then we have the weekend.” She held up three fingers. “That’s three days. So, if we file our vacation time now, we should be good, even if it is short notice. We have to use it before the end of the year anyway, might as well be now.”
“All of it?” Oreo asked plaintively.
“All of it,” B confirmed. “Don’t complain, you’re getting to go to Bijou for part of it and I’m sure you’ll find some way to enjoy it.”
“Damn straight I will,” said Oreo, picking up the chocolate chips one by one and dropping them in her mouth. “But I’m gonna miss taking extra days off for the holidays when they roll around.”
