Oxygen

Charlie wasn’t the only one in the class. It’s a thing, cops studying law through night school. The ones who don’t try it, talk about it, and the ones who don’t talk about it at least think about it, think about all those hours spent in courtrooms watching lawyers screw up their perfectly good case and knowing they could do it so much better if they just had the chance.

I’ve taught enough of them to know the type, and besides, I’ve dated a cop or two in my life. Well, or three or four, really.

Look, I have a type, all right? Is that a crime? 

Anyway.

Charlie wasn’t the only cop in my first year Introduction to Trial Practice class, but he was the only one to stick it out.  Sharp enough in class, middling marks on assignments, which was understandable once I knew he had a couple of small kids at home. He was quick enough to tell me about them, too, not so much making excuses as politely letting me know he was off the market, or off the market where I did my window-shopping, at least.

Like I said, I have a type. 

He got through first term, and it was somewhere in the middle of Criminal Law Theory that I started to notice a few things about Charlie that didn’t fit so well with the law-school-at-night-cop that I had him pegged as. For one thing, he didn’t live on station. I saw him a couple of times after class going into the Interbus hub, and not the system shuttle either, the inter-system exchange. Now, I ask you, what law enforcement official has the disposal income to commute intersystem for a night class – even if most of it is by correspondence?  

I would have assumed he was on the take, but Charlie – he didn’t seem the type. Not that you can tell, always, but his suits had the shiny patches of long wear on the elbows and ass, and when he brought food to class it was sandwiches, not takeaway. So I figured that whoever was the other parent of those kids he carried pictures of on his datapad had money, and plenty of it.

Cia, he said she was. Not my wife or my partner, just her name, but the way he said it – you know how it is with some guys, they fall hard and that’s it, mortal lock, for life. He said her name like it was code for oxygen. Not that he talked about her much, or about anything much. Just kept himself to himself, did the work, came to class, let something slip sometimes in the chit-chat during break.

Kept coming, too, term after term, plodding through the work, Advanced Criminal Practice, Interjurisdictional Procedure, Principles of Evidentiary Admissibility … scraping through, sometimes barely, but by enough for his name to wind up on the list of students who’d accumulated enough points to graduate and maybe get into a real law school somewhere, or at least get something to hang on their wall, a nice holoscroll with their name and the course on it.

Charles Etay, Certificate of Legal Studies, his would say.

We have a proper graduation ceremony for them. It’s just about the only thing about the school that is proper, truth be told. Not that the students aren’t smart, some of them anyway, or the teachers dedicated – for this salary, let me tell you, you’re either dedicated or too crap to get a job elsewhere and we have a mix of the two – but we’re not exactly Pator Tech, or the Republic University.  

We’re affordable, is what we are, when you get right down to it, and we run our classes at hours that let people with jobs get to them.

But we have a proper graduation, so the students who’ve managed to stick it out can show off to their uncles and aunts and the rest of their clan or culturally-appropriate extended family grouping. Even hire a good hall, up on C Deck, with a view over the station undock and the students from first year catering studies circulating with food and drink afterwards.

I was glad for Charlie that he’d gotten through, even if I was a little sad to see him go.  Face like that brightened the scenery in any classroom, after all.  Certainly brightened the scenery in the hall as all the soon-to-be graduates milled around in their ceremonial robes or best clothes or some combination of the two, too nervous to stand still and craning their necks to see where their family and friends were sitting so they’d look in the right direction when the visiting dignitary of the day handed over the scroll.

It always makes me tear up a little, yeah I’m a sentimental old fool, I know, seeing them all together like that, not the best and brightest youth of the Republic but the ones who didn’t quite make the cut or came back here as adults or didn’t get their shit together and get serious about education until after formal schooling was done, but not giving up, no. Studying nights, working days, two jobs some of them, scraping together tuition by skipping meals, all to get here, today, bare-chested Brutor men and fur-trimmed Sebbies, a Vherry girl with a feather headdress and another in a shimmering nano-mesh that had to be the most expensive piece of clothing she owned for all the pattern kept glitching on the shoulders.  

And Charlie, in his well-cut, well-mended Gallente suit.

I always check especially to see where the students are looking out into the audience, because there’s always one or maybe two who aren’t looking, who know there’s no-one there to cheer for them.  I make a special fuss for them myself, all the teachers do, when they cross the floor.

So I was looking to see who had someone to look for, and that’s why I was looking at Charlie when it happened.

At first, I just figured we’d scored a bigger wig than the usual bigwig for the ceremony, when the security guys came in.  They had that look, not casual muscle or rent-a-guards, that serious professional look that goes with a career looking out for someone whose life is worth a lot and whose death would do more than leave a family grieving.  Out of the corner of my eye I could see people turning to look, staring, curious about who exactly this was all for.

But I was looking at Charlie, and he wasn’t even the slightest bit curious. He relaxed, and gave that almost-not-quite-a-smile of his, like it was exactly what he’d been hoping to see.

It still took me a minute to work it out.  I think it was how large the group was that came in next that threw me, too many of them too close in age and too different in heritage to be a family group. No, it was an entourage, and so I was still thinking V.I.P. when I picked out the handful who moved oblivious through the rest of them, knowing that people would get out of the way and move the furniture and damn well cut a door in the wall if it was necessary.

Two Caldari were the ones I marked out first, maybe husband and wife, the man looking a bit vague and distracted, the woman looking around with sharp interest and a grin.  And then a Gallie woman, a little kid on one hip and the other hand steering a determinedly-independent toddler along.  

When she looked our way and smiled with recognition, the coin dropped.  Charlie’s Cia had money, all right, she had the kind of money that makes you need round-the-clock protection by professionals, and why he was working at all in that case, let along working and doing night-school, was beyond me, if he didn’t need the salary and he had a woman who looked like that at home.

She gave him a puzzled look, not angry though, and when he replied with one of those Gallente shrugs she just laughed, and shrugged herself, and kept on steering the toddler – her son, their son – towards the seating.  Charlie watched them as if everything had come right with the world when she entered the room, with his world anyway, and I tell you, if a man like that had ever looked like that at the sight of me crossing a room …

But there you go.

I looked back at Charlie’s woman, partly because I couldn’t look at him looking at her like that much longer without starting to hate her and myself as well, right as she turned to take her seat.

And I saw the glint of jewels and metal on the back of her neck.

Charlie’s Cia was a caspuleer.

The V.I.P. came in around then, in another little bustle of security, noticeably smaller than the one surrounding Charlie’s family, and no fucking wonder is it, given who or what was in that family.  I got busy lining all my students up and making sure they were in the right order so Harbuko Ardreas didn’t get Nia Reyspander’s certificate, and then the first one was off and across the floor and you wouldn’t think it would be possible but I did forget about Charlie and his capsuleer for a while, in all the cheering and whistling and hooting and stamping for each student. One Brutor woman turned and did a few steps of an impromptu war dance on her way back across the stage and got a standing ovation from the whole audience, and then every student had to get a standing ovation, even the tiny old Vherokior man who was so embarrassed by it he fled back to his seat at a sprint.  Even the V.I.P., one of the higher-up academics from a real university, got into the spirit and yelled and clapped like the rest of us as the students, my students at least until the ceremony was over, took their holoscrolls with as much pride as if they were graduate degrees from Pator or Caille.

And why shouldn’t they, after all?  I’d bet a year’s meager salary that there wasn’t a student anywhere in the Cluster who worked harder, all things taken into account, than mine.

When the registrar called out Charles Etay I looked back at his capsuleer, I couldn’t help it.  

She was staring at him crossing the stage like he had suddenly turned bright purple or taken off all his clothes or something, and then as he got about halfway there her face lit up with – I don’t know, exactly. Happiness, yes, but something else.

Comprehension. And, I could have sworn, relief.

And then she was on her feet, before he even had the scroll in his hand, smiling and clapping with tears streaming down her face, and that was the cue for everyone else to be on their feet too, so Charlie got his certificate in the middle of so much hollering and applause I doubt he could even hear what the V.I.P. said to him.  

He took the holoscroll and made his way off the stage, past where I was standing, and by the time he had, his capsuleer had scrambled out of her row and come running down the side of the hall – causing, I have no doubt, a certain amount of professional consternation among the hard-eyed men and women on her security team.  She was still crying and smiling at the same time as she threw herself at him, arms around his neck.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I head her ask. “I would have – ”

Then she pulled back and looked at him, and maybe she heard the words that had come out of her mouth or maybe there was something she saw in his face, because she stopped herself right there.

They looked at each other for a moment, one of those looks when there’s no-one else in the room even if you’re in the middle of a crowd, not that I know from personal experience but I’ve seen it happen, once or twice.

Then she put her arms back around him, and said his name.

Like it was code for oxygen. 

When This Goes Wrong ...

"Of all your fucking appalling ideas, farmboy, this one takes the prize for une assiette pleine de merde."

Lieutenant Charles Etay shrugged a little, having, Capitaine Elienne Desorlay thought sourly, clearly developed an immunity to even my best glare.

Fortune me forniquer.

"What's your better idea, Eli?" Etay asked. "Go back and knock on the front door? Say 'Excusez-moi, s'il vous plaît, je vous ai entendu gardent esclaves ici.' Like that?"

"Better than getting podders mixed into it." Eli shook the last cigarette out of the crumpled pack. "This one especially."

"Because ...?"

"Don't play dumber than you are, Charlie," Eli snapped. "You think he's all post-Sansha and reformed? Really?"

"Now you sound like Proleque."

"And baiser vous with a splintery stick too." She found her lighter and set fire to the cigarette with more vigour than was perhaps necessary. "You think about how our careers are going to look when this gets back home?"

Etay looked down. "I have," he admitted quietly.

"And?"

He paused, and then looked back at her, eyes a little narrowed against the smoke drifting into his face. "I can't just leave them there, Eli."

Merde.

She flicked ash at him for the small, vindictive pleasure of seeing him flinch. "When this goes wrong, farmboy ..."

The corner of his mouth twitched up. "You'll say I told you so?"

Eli snorted. "You'd better believe I will," she said. "If we both live long enough, you'd better believe I will."

Avec grandes cloches sur le dessus.

If I get the fucking chance.

Cross Jurisdictional Issues

"This had fucking well better not be another fucking F.I.O. mindfuck," Capitaine Elienne Desorlay said sourly, grinding her cigarette out beneath her heel.

Lieutenant Charles Etay glanced at her, the corner of his mouth twitching up. "One way to find out."

Eli grunted, and followed him up the steps to the entrance of the S.C.I.D. office. Office was a little grandiose, perhaps, for what was two rooms and three people crammed up the side of a Republic Justice administration building, but law enforcement agencies had their priorities, and so this was a Liaison Office, not a Liaison Converted Stationary Storage.  And it was there to deal with Cross Jurisdictional Issues, not Potential Political Clusterfucks.


Thirty seconds into the meeting and Eli was sure this wasn't another F.I.O. mindfuck. Sixty seconds in and she was starting to wonder if she might not have been better off if it had been.

Fed stations in the Republic, jurisdictional headache number one. Still, that was one reason why she and Etay were there, that and his pretty podder girlfriend and all her ISK, and why there were little converted stationary cupboards tucked away here and there throughout the Republic and the Federation and no doubt the State and Empire too although if Fortune loves me I'll never find out. 


Usually the stations took care of their own problems, with a little help when necessary from whatever their native law-enforcement might be. In this case, on the particular Gallente station in question stuck like a pimple on an asteroid in the ass-end of Metro low-sec, that would be S.C.I.D.

Except the Republic Justice Liaison Broomcloset out there had come to the conclusion, and the S.C.I.D. Liaison Stationary Cupboard here obviously agreed, that the S.C.I.D. officers there were compromised.

Bought off, that meant. And Republic Justice wouldn't normally give a flying fuck at a rolling peshorky if a Fedo station couldn't keep its officers on the straight and narrow, but the Republic was a tiny bit sensitive about some issues.

Like slaves.

Even if they are Caldari.


Eli kept her mouth shut until the meeting was done, let Etay do what little talking there was to do. Not much. S.C.I.D. and Republic Justice had done most of it beforehand, that was clear. She and Etay were there to be told what someone snug behind a desk had decided they were going to do.

Go in without backup, where we can't trust our own people, where we can't flash tin to get out of trouble without getting in worse, and find out what's the truth behind these rumours of Caldari on a Gallente station ...


With collars around their necks.


On the sidewalk outside, however, was a different matter. "Fortune fuck me sideways, you fils de putain de merde," she snarled. "This is on you, farmboy, you and your pretty podder who thinks she can change the Cluster to suit her fancies. Look at us! Stuck out here in the cul of the Republic and about to get ourselves killed cleaning up some political shitstorm, or killed for cleaning it up if Fortune fucking smiles on us."

Etay put his hands in his pockets and smiled at his shoes. "Don't hold back," he said mildly. "How do you really feel about it?"

Eli swatted his arm, hard enough to make him wince and make her swear with the sting of her palm. "Get us out of this. Get your podder to pull some strings and get them to send someone else."

"Mmm," Etay said, and Eli could tell from long experience that her partner meant no by that, meant that's a line I won't cross, meant I'm not going to be moved on this one. "If they're right, Eli, this is pretty ugly. Those people ..."

"Fuck 'em, they're Callies, I'm not looking to get shivved in an alley for a pack of people who'd like to shoot me as soon as see me."

"Eli," Etay said patiently. "I'm Caldari."

She snorted. "One of your ancestors got cunt-struck by a piece of Callie tail back in the hither-and-yon, doesn't make you fucking anything. Don't even try that shit. You don't even drink fucking tea!"

"Still," Etay said. "Still. They're people. And Repub Juice can't sent anyone themselves. You heard them, the station is almost entirely Fed hires. Minmatar agents would stick out like sore thumbs."

"Oh, and you won't?"

He gave her his best sunny choirboy smile. "You just said I wasn't Caldari."

"Farmboy," Eli said, and stopped.  You could be the purest Gallente off the Crystal Boulevard and you'd still catch every eye in every crowd.


Oh, fuck it. Dying in bed surrounded by fat, happy grandchildren was never more than a pipe dream, anyway. Not for someone like me, anyway. 


And certainly not for pretty boys who catch the eye of pretty podders.

She lit a cigarette.  "Fine. Fucking fine. Let's go. Save your ancestral cousins from their probably just deserts, or whatever. We live through this one, farmboy, though, you will talk to that girl of yours."  She exhaled a gust of smoke, and whatever Etay had been going to say was cut off in a fit of coughing. "Doubt she wants you dead, Charlie, whatever else I think about her. Doubt she wants you dead."

Yet, anyway.

Yet.

The Consultation

"Do you know why you're here?"

Capitaine Elienne Desorlay took out a cigarette and lit it, ignoring the wrinkled nose of the man across the desk. "We'll ask the questions, M'ser Proleque," she said on a gust of smoke.

Beside her, Lieutenant Charles Etay coughed politely.  "What my partner means to say," he said smoothly, "Is that we're eager to hear how we can assist the F.I.O. in this matter of ...?"

Tomas Proleque ran his hand over his bald head. "You can assume I'm more than immune to your provincial good-cop bad-cop routine," he said, and genial as his tone was Eli felt the hair lift on her arms. "And you should assume that the last thing, the very last thing, Capitaine Desorlay, that you want, is for me to answer your questions."

Eli couldn't bring herself to nod. She drew on her cigarette instead, started at Proleque through the smoke, and waited.

Been waiting all Fortune-fucked day, after all.

Called back to the Fed on five minutes notice for a consultation, that had been the first sign something was wrong. S.C.I.D. didn't spring for interbus tickets when a comm call would do.

The only reason to haul us over here is so we're in arm's reach when they decide they don't want us leaving again.


That hadn't been good, no.

Discovering that S.C.I.D. had yanked them back to hand them over to the F.I.O. with a bow on top, just about ...


Eli had been searching her memory for what she or Charlie might have done that had the F.I.O. sniffing after them for the hours they'd been cooling their heels in a blank grey waiting room.  The Eletta business, maybe, had been the best she could come up with.

Until  Proleque looked at her, looked at Etay, and smiled. "You know Ciarente Roth," he said.

Fortune fuck me and fuck him and especially fuck all podders everywhere, good and hard.

I knew that girl was trouble. 

Etay made a mild, non-committal noise, and Eli was impressed despite herself by his restraint.

Proleque's smile widened. "Captain Roth is not the subject of today's discussion, Lieutenant Etay. Nor are her children. Your children."  Unspoken, That could change hung in the air. "I simply need to know how her father is doing."

Her ... "Father?" Eli asked.  Well, clearly, she had one, Eli, good thinking there. 

Had one, has one ... a father the F.I.O. care about. 


"I'm afraid I can't help you," Etay said. Proleque opened his mouth to speak and Etay went on, his slightly raspy voice mild and even. "I've never met the man. I don't think I've heard Captain Roth mention him more than once or twice."

"And what did she say?" Proleque was equally mild and even. Nonetheless, the air in the room seemed to chill a little. Eli felt as if she was watching a particularly fierce mindclash match, the opponents testing each other's weakness. And the first mistake will be the last.


"That he was travelling," Etay said. "That they were estranged. That she didn't know where he was and didn't care to find out."

Travelling.

F.I.O. 

Travelling.

Deep undercover, more like. 

Or ...

Dead.  

Proleque looked at something on the screen of his terminal, touched a key. Probably his shopping list, Eli thought. Trying to make us think he has some sort of incriminating transcript. She might be provincial but police-work had its universal patterns. "Has he been in contact with her?"

"She hasn't mentioned," Etay said blandly.

Proleque looked at the screen again. "That wasn't what I asked."

Don't lie for her, Charlie, Eli willed him. She's safe from men like this. You aren't.

Nor am I, for that fucking matter. 

Etay shot his cuffs and folded his hands on one knee. "I don't believe he's been in contact with her, no."

"Why?"

Etay smiled, very slightly. "Estranged."

Proleque matched the smile. "Do you know why?"

"It's not something we've discussed."

"Again, you answer a question I haven't asked," Proleque said. "Do you know why Captain Roth and her father are estranged?"

"I don't, no," Etay said, and Eli felt her heart sink as she heard the flat note of a lie in his voice.

"Would it surprise you to learn that it is due to her membership of Sansha's Nation?" Proleque asked genially.

"It would surprise me to learn that Captain Roth is a member of Sansha's Nation, yes." There was no inflection to Etay's voice.

"But not that her father objected to such an allegiance?"

Etay smiled, bland and sunny. "I imagine many fathers would."

"But you still say you have no knowledge of Captain Roth's contact with her father," Proleque said.

"I have no knowledge that Captain Roth has had any contact with her father," Etay corrected.  He smiled again. "Does M'ser Roth say they have?"

 "M'ser Roth - " Proleque said, and stopped. Eli saw the faintest flicker in his gaze, and knew, and felt Etay know beside her as well.

The match was over. And farmboy wins.

"You've misplaced him, haven't you?" Etay asked kindly.

Like he's slipped down behind the couch cushions, Eli thought, and then, on a fresh chill, they haven't 'misplaced' him.

They think the podder has.

And ... 

Not by accident.

Flash Flood

((co-written with Stitcher))

Helmi Alpassi knew that she'd originally been tapped to train into Pilot Roth's personal security detail because Sarge had known she could keep her head when it mattered.

Had known it from the first moment they met, after all.

And if there ever was a moment not to panic, Alpassi, this is fucking it.

"Pilot, Lieutenant Etay," she said calmly, "if you'd come to the front of the house with me now, the shuttle is on approach."

Charles Etay was carrying one of the babies in a safety-capsule. Amieta Invelen had the other. Helmi couldn't tell which was which and really didn't give a shit, so long as the total number of babies equalled two and they were each in the most expensive and sophisticated piece of protective child-transport equipment available in the Cluster. Helmi had picked those capsules herself, after a lot of research.

Finding out they were tested by dropping them out of a second story window with an actual child in them had sealed the deal.

Still, she would have preferred them to be carried by her people, would have preferred all the civilians to be hoisted up and hauled at speed to the assembly point, really.

If speed had been an issue, Pilot's feet wouldn't have touched the ground. But the shuttle won't be here for another three minutes anyway.

And Pilot was prone to panic. Helmi knew that part of her job description was making sure Pilot felt safe, as well as was safe.

So she let Etay carry one of the twins. And she didn't take Pilot's elbow to hurry her along, even when Pilot paused and said something about flowers and the nursery.

"I'll make sure they're packed," Invelen said reassuringly, and Pilot started moving again. Helmi scanned the sky, looking for spikey sansha shapes, saw none, saw ...

The sky.

It was wrong in a gut-wrenching way, the familiar off-black interstellar dust clouds of New Eden as seen from Debreth at sunset shifted towards an ugly yellow-green, like a gathering storm of forces Helmi didn't want to guess at. The Intel suddenly went from an intellectual threat to a real and immediate one. Adrenaline pulsed her implants to a higher pitch, burning copper on her tongue.

And on the horizon, burning rain. Five stars, moving as stars shouldn't, glowing like a banked furnace in the fading light as they twisted and writhed, shedding speed. Almost hidden behind the wind, the banging of the air as it raged  impotently against this supersonic violation swept across the valley, echoing like a distant battle.

Nothing so clean and wholesome as thunder and lightning rode on the winds of this storm.

And the floods it brought were not the kind Debreth was build to withstand.

Implants on her retinas read the friendly, so that's fucking something IFF broadcasts from the falling constellation as it shed the last of its speed in one low looping bank over the river and swept in towards the estate.

A surface-to-orbit shuttle painted in the livery of Re-Awakened Technologies Inc settled in the wide avenue as three of the remaining ships – angular Caldari gunships bristling with weapons - screamed overhead, their hulls bearing a blue starburst on bare gunmetal. The fifth, much larger ship settled in to a relative stop above the Roth estate and the grounds thrummed with the subsonic rumbling of immense graviton pads keeping the staging platform aloft. A percussive blast rattled the windows as explosive bolts blew along its flanks and four humanoid giants, armoured and massive, dropped from the flanks of the the thirty meters to the ground and landed in a blast of pneumatic gas. Within a second their guns and sensors were tracking the skies as they fanned out, covering the grounds.

Only a moment behind them were the ropes, ten of them, and before those ropes had even finished uncoiling to the ground, the first of the troopers was on it, her arrestor hook buzzing harshly as it slowed her descent. She hit the ground and rolled, moving aside with only a heartbeat to spare before the next trooper, and the next after him hit the deck, rolled and bustled to cover, each claiming three drones from the swarm that swept from the dropship's bays. Almost-white painted ceramic hardsuits, each with that blue starburst splash and a mirrored visor covering the face, Kaalakiota assault rifles. Airtight, nanite-proof, damn near bulletproof, but still light and clean-lined enough to allow the soldiers to move with grace and ease in Debreth's low gravity.

The flurry of activity swept towards the little knot of people on the lawn, parted around them, and left them untouched, except for the wind whipping their hair.

One of the troopers, the first one out, jogged towards them, heading unerringly for Pilot Roth. No rank insignia, Helmi noted, just a blue sunburst, and the words Hakatain Dynasty Holdings and A. Sihayha. I.D. confirmation spooled across her retinas and Helmi stopped the instinctive reach for her sidearm before it was more than a flicker of muscles as Captain Hakatain's personal bodyguard tapped the side of her helmet to clear the faceshield, saw a corresponding flicker in the other woman's eyes.

"Captain Roth," the woman said. "Chief Aato Sihahya. Captain Hakatain sends his regards."

Pilot - surreally, given the circumstances - extended her hand and said with a smile, "I'm very pleased to meet you. I hope you had a safe trip?"

"Safe enough, ma'am," Sihahya said, returning the handshake with a gauntlet that could probably have crushed Pilot's hand flat if she wanted. "With your permission, we'll see to the defence of your estate and the town in your absence."

"With my ... " Pilot's voice trailed off, and Helmi suppressed a sigh. One day she'll learn that she's in charge.

Her mouth was open to translate Pilot-speak into marine, one more part of her job, Pilot Roth appreciates your offer and certainly extends all the permissions you need to carry out the protection of the Roth property and surrounding area, when Pilot surprised her.

"Thank you," Pilot Roth said, quietly but clearly. "That would be appreciated. Please do anything you feel required."

One day turns out to be today, Helmi thought, as Sihahya saluted and re-opaqued her visor with a brief nod to Helmi. Either the the Ancestors are with us, or the world is about to end.

Or both.

"Pilot, we need to be getting you on the shuttle," she said. Invelen was already moving. Helmi herded Pilot and Etay up the ramp as armoured forms set up defensive positions around them, mostly missing the flower-beds.

One baby started wailing, then the other. Pilot tried to comfort them as Invelen secured the capsules but the twins refused to be consoled and their piercing screams were a counterpoint to the rumble of the shuttle engines as it lifted off. Helmi linked her optical implants into the shuttle's external cameras and watched as two of Hakatain's gunships escorted the shuttle into high atmosphere, then stalled into a graceful backwards dive towards Debreth again as the shuttle raced towards its rendezvous with the Feather.

As the gunships shrank to invisibility against the blue-green globe below them, Helmi let the connection fade. Spirits watch over you, she wished the men and women they were leaving behind.

And Ancestors sharpen your aim.

Welcome To The Future

Section F -  F-for-Freedom, F-for-Future, it said right there in big letters over the section ring seal - was the part of the station which housed returnees from the Empire, the State and the Federation until they'd found jobs and clans and homes.

And it stank.
 

Too many people for the space, for the waste services, the air-cyclers, Capitaine Elienne Desorlay thought.

She'd seen the ads on the holo, back in the Federation, a tall Brutor woman whose deep brown skin picked up the colours of the Minmatar flag  on the wall behind her, her faintly-accented Gallantean vibrant with hope and promise. Come home, children of the Republic! Home to lives of freedom, the lives of your ancestors.


Eli snorted at the memory.  If your ancestors lived on tubes of casien protein, maybe, ten-to-a-room in the bowels of a space station with the perpetual hum and thud of the biomass processors on the other side of the wall.

Still, it doesn't smell as bad as it did last time.

Or maybe I'm getting used to it.

She lit a cigarette anyway, sour local Republic tobacco but better than nothing, as Lieutenant Charles Etay hitched the knees of his trousers and crouched by the body lying against the wall.

Eli was pretty sure it was a body, although without the medtechs' identification of the stained and crumpled rags wrapped around oozing meat as human, she would have had her doubts.

She exhaled a lungful of smoke. "Well?"

"No ID," Etay said, turning to look up at her. "Might not have had any before the beating."

"If he's registered with - he?" Etay nodded confirmation and Eli went on, "Registered with Resettlement, they'll have his DNA on file."

"If he was registered. And if they'd gotten around to testing." Etay looked back at the body. "Dental, maybe. If there's anything left of his teeth."

"If he ever saw a dentist," Eli said. "Fortune fuck me, it's not like his own mother would know his face."

"No," Etay said soberly. He rose to his feet with the easy grace of the young and strong, the fils de putain de merde, and adjusted his cuffs. "Morgue services'll have a better idea, but what do you think? Four of them? Five?"

Eli dropped her cigarette and crushed it with a toe. "At least. Fists and feet. But I don't see much blood on the walls, not that you could tell in this shithole."

"Somewhere else, then?"

"Could be. Or else ... more than five. A lot more. Packed in around him."

Etay put his hands in his pockets and looked at the walls assessingly. "Splashes on them, not the walls."

"Yeah." Eli shook another cigarette from the pack. "A lot more than five. Fifteen, twenty. More."

"Five is a gang," Etay said thoughtfully. "But twenty, Eli. Twenty is a mob."  He tilted back his head to look up at the walls rising on either side of them, vanishing somewhere twenty stories up into the clouds gusting from the over-worked envirosystems. Heads disappeared from sight as he did, windows banged shut. "Mobs don't come from nothing. Inter-tribal? Some sort of feud?"

"No reports of anything like that," Eli said. "Not that I've seen. Some shoving in the lines at supply, name-calling. Big jump from that to this."

Etay looked around the grimy alley with its grisly contents, and then slid Eli a sideways glance, one eyebrow raised. "Such a big jump, someone would have seen it, non?"


Four hours later Eli lit her last cigarette and thought sourly, 'Non' is just about fucking right.

Someone had seen something, she would have bet her pension on it, more than one someone, too, but those witnesses, whoever they were, weren't talking. Not just the usual 'no love lost for the long arm o f the law' either. She flicked ash down-wind.

The closest they'd gotten to an answer had been We take care of our own from a skinny Sebbie woman with the fish-belly pale skin of a life-long station dweller, the words spoken with the flat contempt of someone who'd long ago lost faith in the tender mercy of those in authority to take care of anyone but themselves.

"Something that never got reported, maybe," Eli said aloud, and Etay nodded. "Could be some tribal thing even, for all we know - "

She felt a tug at her sleeve and turned fast. Just a kid. A snot-nosed Vherry kid of indeterminate gender, pulling on her arm with fingers black with dirt.

"That's bad for you," the child said solemnly, pointing at her cigarette. "It'll make you die. We learned in school."

"That's you told," Etay murmured, the corner of his mouth twitching up.

Eli gave him her best glare, the one that had sons and husband backing towards the door when she used it at home, and Etay ducked his head and got very interested in his shoes.  Eli turned the glare on the kid, but the miniature Minmatar was made of sterner stuff.

"It is, though," the - boy? girl? - insisted. "Bad for you."

"I'm Gallente," Eli said. "It's different. But yes, it would be very bad for you. I'd have to arrest you."

Etay, the salaud, was laughing at her, almost soundlessly but I can fucking well tell. Eli put a hand on her hip, showing the child the ID pinned to her belt. "See? Republic Justice. So beat it before I put you in jail for loitering."

The kid moved back, just out of arm's length, and stopped there. "Are you here because of the Sansha?"

That sobered Etay. "No," he said, and Eli shook her head as well. "The Fleet and the capsuleers will make sure the Sansha never come here, okay?"

"No," the kid said patiently. "Not the ones out there. The one here."

Etay hitched up the knees of his trousers and crouched. "What one here, hmm?"

One skinny little arm lifted, and one filthy finger pointed, past Etay, back down the alley to the temporary barrier already beginning to sag on one side, marking the place the body had lain. 

Eli looked, then looked back at the kid. "How do you know he was Sansha?"

A shrug that said as clearly as DNA testing that the kid had some Gallente blood was her only answer.

"Did someone tell you he was?" Etay asked, and got a nod. "Who? Do you remember?"

Another shrug. "Everybody," the kid said. "Everybody was saying it."

Etay met Eli's gaze over the top of the child's no-doubt  lice-ridden head. "Everybody was saying it," he said quietly.

Words. Words and fear, at first. Until more and more people hear it, repeat it, and then it's words and fear and fists and feet.

And some poor bastard is little more than a smear on the sidewalk. 

Etay produced a bar of sweetened gelatine from a pocket, and offered it to the child. "Do you know who it was, who was saying it?" he asked. "Names?"

With a shake of his head, the kid snatched the bar and bolted.

Eli burned her cigarette down to the filter with a final drag. "You have to hold it out of their reach," she said. "For future reference."

Etay didn't smile. "We should make sure they check the body for any extras," he said, getting to his feet.

"You know they're not going to find any, farmboy, don't you?"

He looked at his feet, golden hair falling across his forehead and hiding his face from her. "I know. But we should make sure they check."

"And you know we're never going to get a name, or names, don't you? Who ever it was, they're local heroes now."

"Defending against the Sansha threat," Etay said quietly.

Eli shrugged. "Welcome to the future, farmboy," she said. "This isn't going to be the last time someone's suspicions get some poor fucker lynched. Anyway, it could be worse."

Etay raised an eyebrow at that.

Eli shoved him towards the exit, towards off-shift and home and a bottle of wine and some cigarettes from the Fed that don't taste of armpit. "He could have actually been a Sansha," she said. "Think about that, why don't you?"

"They've never set foot on a station," Etay said. "Cia said that."

"That she knows of," Eli said. "That she knows of, farmboy."

Etay let her herd him along. "The capsuleers are driving them back."

"Until they get bored," Eli said.  "Oh, I know, I know, your pretty girl podder will put her ship on the line to save the innocents, you've said, more than once in fact you've said. They're all like her, are they? You know they aren't, and one day you'll realise she isn't like that either, not really.  Podders, Charlie. Not people."

Etay looked down at her, and then back the way they'd come.

"Maybe they aren't," he said quietly. "Maybe not. But Eli - can you honestly say, today, that being people like the people back there who kicked a man to death because someone whispered 'Sansha', can you honestly say that people is always something worthwhile to be?"

Love and Crime

"Charlie, you're a fool." Capitaine Elienne Desorlay hunched her shoulders against the draft whistling out of the ventilation duct, gaze steady on the door at the end of the alley.  "This exchange program - that no-one's ever heard of before - just happened to pull your name out of the hat right when your capsuleer conceived more than a fancy to have you closer to home?"

Lieutenant Charles Etay, his thick coat more than a match for the breeze, more podder bribes, shrugged. "A job is a job all the same."

"A job that's a podder's grace and favour, for you to lose as soon as you lose her fancy?" Eli snorted, fumbling in her pocket for her cigarettes. "That's not a job, farm-boy. That's a polite way of offering to turn you into her putain.."

That got her no more reaction than a faint smile. "Such a way with words, you have," Etay said, leaning forward to cup his hands around her lighter as the draft made the flame flicker and dim.

"Oh, and how's it going to be, then, you tell me, when she tires of your pretty face?" Eli drew on the cigarette and when it lit, puffed smoke in Etay's face.  "When you tell her no when she wants to hear yes? When you think yours when she's thinking hers?"

Etay took a step back and turned to watch the door again. "There's a job there. There'll be one here, if I need it." He shrugged a little."Do you think this asshole's going to show?"

"He'll show," Eli said with flat certainty.

"He's got to know we'll be watching his girl," Etay said.  "The smart thing would be to -"

Eli flicked ash downwind. "You're forgetting something."

"I am?"

"One, he's a criminal. And crime makes you stupid," Eli said, holding up her thumb.

"Well, that explains a great deal," Etay said mildly.

"And two," Eli said, raising her forefinger to make the shape of a gun, "He's in love. And love, farmboy ..." She aimed at him. "Love makes you dumber than dumb."

Etay glanced sideways at her, long lashes half lowered over his limpid gaze, the breeze ruffling his hair into artless disarray, leaning against the wall as if he belongs on the cover of a holo, not that he knows it, which is almost more annoying, Fortune fuck him. "I recall you saying something along those lines once or twice before."

"A pretty girl crooks her finger, and a silly boy goes running. And then discovers he can't go wandering off again so easily."

Etay laughed soundlessly. "You think Cia plans to keep me chained up and captive?" he asked.  "To father the rest of her children?'

"Stranger things have fucking happened, farmboy, most of them in podder's hangars."

Etay took a step sideways as a passer-by obscured his view of the door. "She's not like that, Eli."

"Oh, not like that, not like that, says the man so head-over-heels in love with her he can't see her any more clearly than he can the shadow behind the sun." Eli burnt the cigarette down to filter on a single ferocious inhalation and dropped it.  "Fortune fuck me, and Robert just finished repainting the bathroom."

"Painting the ... " Etay stopped, eyes steady on the end of the alley. Not a stupid boy, no, Eli thought. Just a foolish one. "Eli ..."

"Someone has to keep an eye on you, farmboy. Someone with a clear head."  

The corner of Etay's mouth that Eli could see twitched upwards. "And you're volunteering?"

"Partners, remember?" She took a wide step around him as a face familiar from the squadroom holoboard showed at the end of the alley. "So you tell your pretty podder mama-to-be that this exchange program needs to have room for your senior partner. Flutter your eyelashes at her, or something."

"Eli ..."

She jerked her chin towards their target. "You going to argue with me or you going to make this arrest?"

Etay's head turned, his eyes narrowing, and he reached for the PRD on his belt. Cop trumps love-sick fool, Eli thought to herself.

For now, anyway.

For now.

Human

"No," Capitaine Elienne Desorlay said flatly. She opened the drawer of her desk and for an instant her hand hovered over her sidearm before she reached past it for the crumpled pack of cigarettes. "No fucking way."

"They'll dock you," Lieutenant Charles Etay reminded her mildly, "If you get another citation for smoking in the squadroom."

"My business," Elienne said, patting her pockets for a lighter. Shit. It's always in that one pocket ... She hoisted herself up to fit her fingers in the front pocket of pants that had been shrinking in the wash more and more lately. Got you, you putain de merde. "Not yours."

"Partners," Etay said. "What's yours is mine, remember? And I can't afford the fine. I'm going to be - "

"So you fucking said," Elienne snapped, flicked the lighter and saw their supervisor heading towards them. "Merde."

"Have an orange instead," Etay said, producing another of his increasingly-frequent fruit miracles from a jacket pocket.

"Gift from your fucking podder?" Elienne asked sourly.

Etay smiled at her, sunny and unperturbed. "From the podder I'm fucking, yes."

Elienne stuffed the unlit cigarette and lighter in her pocket. "And didn't anybody ever tell you not to wade without your waterproofs?"

"Mmm, well," Etay said, turning the orange slowly between his hands. "Everybody knows pod pilots can't be natural parents."

"So you just assumed..." Words failed her for a moment, and then returned in a string of obscenities that turned heads even in the squadroom.

Etay didn't try to interrupt, peeling the skin from the orange as Elienne gave him the full force of her opinion of his intelligence, parenthood, upbringing and general character. By the time she'd run down into fuming silence, he had a neat pile of peel on the edge of her desk and a heap of translucent crescents in the palm of one pale, long-fingered hand.  He offered one to her, the sweet, sharp scent stirring some dim image in Elienne's mind, a feeling like memory but one that connected to no place or time she'd ever known.  She took the fruit without conscious thought, a broken fingernail ripping the thin membrane and sending a trickle of juice running down her wrist.

"I assumed, oui," Etay said as Elienne stuffed the piece of orange in her mouth and licked the last trace of juice from her hand before it could disappear up her shirtsleeve. "I know. When you assume you make an 'ass' out of 'u' and - "

Elienne cut him off. "You made an ass out of you, farmboy, leave me the fuck out of it.  I wouldn't fuck a podder with my worst enemy's dick, let alone get her en cloque. And you think she was assuming she wouldn't end up avec un polichinel dans le tirrior?"

That got her another sunny smile. "Do you think it's a plan to sue me for child support?"

She snorted. "Be serious." Even with the worst will in the world it was hard to see how a capsuleer could be out for Charlie's money. He makes less than I do, for Fortune's sake, and I make two fifths of one tenth of fuck-all.

Charlie ate another crescent of orange. "I am serious," he said. "I'm serious about everything. You know that."

"Yeah, everything and nothing," Elienne said. "Charlie. This has gone far enough.  She's a podder."

"She is a podder, yes," he conceded. "And she's going to be the mother of my child."

"Mother?" Elienne closed her eyes, decided The Super can go fuck himself, and fumbled the now-crumpled cigarette out of her pocket. "Look, farmboy.  Whatever the fuck a podder turns into when it reproduces, it isn't a mother. A mother is a human thing, it's ... " She lit the cigarette and burned it a quarter down with one ferocious draw. "Take it from me. I've had three. Stretch-marks and hemorrhoids and tit-rot and all the rest of it. Waking up at one in the morning, and again at two thirty, and again at four, all of you hurting like poison from how tired you are, and still loving that little, screaming, stinking creature more than you ever knew there was love in you, even while you want to put a pillow over its face so you can get some sleep. Human, all of it, hard and ugly as it is. That's not something that belongs in a podder's world."  She ashed the cigarette into Etay's pile of orange peel and drew on it again. "You've been fooling yourself that this podder feels for you like you feel for her, and now tu l'as mise en cloque and you're talking about the  mother of your child but Charlie, she's a fucking starship, not a mother, and whatever comes out of her in nine month's time - "

"Six months," Etay corrected her mildly.

"Whenever the fuck, she won't be a mother and it won't be your child. If it's even a child."

His expression was grave, and for a moment Elienne thought she'd finally got through to him.  Then he quirked one eyebrow. "You think it'll be a shuttle?"

No such fucking luck.

She shook her head, and stubbed out  her cigarette on the sole of her shoe. "Charlie.  This isn't a joke. It isn't a crush, anymore, yours or hers."

He offered her another piece of orange, and when she made no move to take it, set it carefully on the edge of her desk, ends upright like Tomas had used to make the smiles in his drawings. "I know that."

Elienne shook her head. A podder gets a pretty plaything, stops taking his calls when she gets bored, never thinks about the wreck she makes of a man's heart. That's a heartbreak.

A podder gets a pretty plaything and takes a fancy to breed another. What does she do when she gets bored with her toys and her poor pretty boy's fantasy that he's got something to do with her life and her child?

More than a heart's going to get broken, here.

She picked up the piece of orange and bit into it, sweet and tart at the same time, and sighed. "What am I going to do with you, farmboy?"

Etay studied the heap of peel and cigarette ash for a moment, apparently giving her question serious thought, and then reached out and swept it all into the trash bin by the desk and gave her his sweetest, sunniest smile. "Tell me more about your hemorrhoids?" he suggested.

Elienne tried to glare at him, but as always, she couldn't keep it up. No wonder that Fortune forsaken podder picked him for a diversion.

Sweet, pretty, silly farmboy. Thinking about a little voice calling him 'Papa', about first steps and milk teeth and all the rest of the holvertisements. 

Poor stupid fool.

The Hope Of His Heart

It's a story told a thousand ways on a thousand worlds.

Micha Krenshaw's Folklore Compendium records seven different versions in the system of Luminaire alone, and another forty in Crux. His students, and their students, have heard it told in Domain, in Heimatar, in Solitude, in Syndicate.  Different, each time.

And the same.

A girl, or a boy, it doesn't matter which, but human, that's the point of the story. A human girl, a human boy.

A door in the hill, or a gap in the hedge, or a mirror that reflects more than the face of those who look into it, or a pool of water, or a grove of trees. Whichever it may be, or something else entirely, it's always a gate - a gate from this world to another.

From the human, to the ... not.

Sometimes the human boy or the human girl finds a way through the door or the gap or the mirror.

Sometimes something else finds its way out.


They're always beautiful. More beautiful than humanly possible.

Because they're not human, that's the point of the story.

They stay a night, or two. Perhaps they come back, if it pleases them.  Only if it pleases them, though. It's for mortals to take care of the feelings of those around them.

Those from beyond the hedge or beneath the hill or behind the mirror take their pleasure and their leave.

Sometimes there's a child. A human woman left with broken heart and swelling belly, a human man woken by a midnight knock at the door nine months later to find a squalling bundle on the doorstep.

A changeling child, a half-breed, to raise and love but not to keep.

Not that the human mother or father weeping by the cradle need any reminder. They're beautiful, the ones from beyond, more beautiful than humanly possible, and even the sight of them condemns a human man or woman to pine forever, that glamor forever between them and the deed of their hand, between them and the hope of their heart.

It is possible to make them stay. Stay for a time, at least. Find the animal skin they shucked to take a more human form and hide it, or slip a rope woven from a single hair around their neck, or mark their forehead with a holy symbol in oil, or ash, or blood.  Lay cold iron on them.

Put a gold band on their finger.

They will stay human then, live and love in human form, at least until they search out their skin or pick apart the rope with a thorn from a rosebush planted by the light of the first full moon of spring, or gather  dew on the last day of the year three years in a row to wash away the mark.  And they will, always. That is one thing the stories all agree on.

They will love you, and stay with you, if you compel them, but they will never stop trying to be free.

Charles Etay watches the girl in his kitchen as she whisks a sauce and tastes it, pulls a face and adds salt. She is playing at being normal, here in his tiny apartment.  She's good at it, too.

The neighbors have no idea she's a pod-pilot and Charlie suspects they wouldn't believe him if he tried to tell them the truth. That nice young Cia Roth? Never!


She is playing at belonging in his world, with more success than he has when he's a visitor to hers.

And tomorrow, or the next day, she will leave. Return to her home between the stars.  Come back, as and when she choses, or summon him to her side.

He will wait, for the knock at the door, for the call, for the Interbus ticket in an envelope or the sight of her at the end of the street as he turns the corner for home.  He will wait, until the time comes when she stops calling, stops coming.

And then he will still wait.

It's a story told  a thousand ways on a thousand worlds.

It always ends the same.

Pretty Faces, Foolish Hearts

"So," Capitaine Elienne Desorlay said, tapping a cigarette free from the pack she held. "I talked to your podder friend."

Lieutenant Charles Etay regarded her mildly. "Which one?"

Which one. Fortune fuck me, it's come to that, when my partner has to ask 'which one' about the podders he knows. "The fruit one."

"Amieta."

"Yeah." The lighter caught on the third click and Elienne busied herself with getting the end of her cigarette burning, not least to have a reason not to look at Etay right at that moment.  First name terms ... Somewhere in the back of her mind was a vague conviction that there were things it was better not to call by name.

In case they hear you.

And come.

 "Why were you talking to Amieta?" Etay asked.

Elienne glanced up at him, trying to read his expression. No luck. Whatever Etay was thinking was hidden behind an expression of such studied neutrality it could have done double-duty as the Yulai Accords. "I haven't had much luck talking to you, have I?"

A slight thinning of the lips, that got her, a downward glance. That was all. "Eli ..."

She flicked ash from the end of her cigarette. "Relax, farmboy.  I should've told her you've a string of girlfriends and a suspicious rash and to keep her sister out of your way, but I guess I'm going soft in my old age.  I told her you deserved better than to be some capsuleer's pretty plaything for a week, and she didn't argue."

Etay sighed. "Eli ..."

"She seems to like you, for some reason.  Said you were solid, which shows she's not a fool." Elienne exhaled smoke. "Thinks you're smart, too, so her judgement's not that good."

Etay blinked as the smoke drifted into his face.  "And what else did you two discuss?"

"This'n'that," Elienne said, and shrugged.  "She said she wanted her sister to be happy, closer to a normal  human emotion I ever would have thought a capsuleer would have, and I don't think she'd look kindly on anyone made her sister unhappy, so you watch yourself, farmboy. You hear?"

"Watch myself?"

Elienne dropped her cigarette to the ground and trod on it. "Yeah.  She thinks you might be good for the girl.  Something about her having a bad time." She snorted. "Guess all that murdering was rough on her."

"I think maybe it wasn't quite like you're thinking it was," Etay said, his slightly hoarse voice even quieter than usual.

"I think maybe it wasn't quite like you're thinking it was, farmboy, but that's beside the point," Elienne said. "The point is, much as you've made yourself an annoyance to this woman, she did her best to sell me on the idea that this girl you've got moon-eyes for, and don't insult me by pretending you don't, that this girl isn't a walking plasma-leak of trouble for a boy like you."

Etay looked at her sideways with his usual faint smile of wry amusement. At me, at the absurdity of a cop and a podder playing at matchmaking like two old ladies in one of Krenshaw's stories, at the Cluster, maybe. Or all of them.  "And?"


Elienne shrugged. "She wants you to get to know her sister, you want to get to know her sister, you're pretty enough not to need any more help than that. Just ... watch yourself, Charlie.  These pilots, they might seem like normal people, but ..."

He studied her. "She's just a girl, Eli."

"A pretty girl," Elienne corrected, and saw the faint color rise in Etay's cheeks, and sighed.

Pretty faces.


Foolish hearts.

That's where all the trouble starts. 

Podders or not.

Diamonds On The Soles Of Her Shoes

Debreth was a very pretty city, Capitaine Elienne Desorlay thought, despite the grey sky and cold wind that cut through her coat like a knife through sandwich spread. The buildings were pretty, in their matching yellow stone. The river was pretty, if a little frightening as it churned its way under the bridges. The trees were pretty, even without their leaves. And the people were pretty, too, not in the uniform way of the holoreels but with clear eyes that were used to seeing sky and an easy way of walking that said they were used to having enough space to finish a stride without stepping on the heels of the person in front of them.

Could be Farm-boy's home town, come to think of it.


Lieutenant Charles Etay's home town, maybe, but not Elienne's. The gaping open space above her head gave her the creeps, for one thing, and she had no idea how anyone could have a preference for living in a place that had no working temperature control.

Nice enough to visit, well, anywhere was nice enough to visit for a day or so, and Elienne hadn't said no when Charlie had suggested they put their names in the pool to see who'd get sent on the consult request from the local force.  And they'd gotten lucky, or else Charlie's star was on the rise again, even if his big war-crimes arrest had ended with the file marked 'deceased' and not with a trial.

Closed is closed, that was the rule.  And closing a case got you anything from an slap on the back to a promotion, depending on just how big and ugly and political the case had been and just how neatly you'd tied all the ends together.

Charlie had got a trip to Annelle XI, on expenses, which Elienne judged meant the case against Sarakai Voutelen fell somewhere in the middle of the range.

The case here hadn't even been a bad one, financial fraud, not even properly Crimes-Against-Persons except an accounts clerk had gotten a nasty bump on the head when he'd stumbled over the perp working late in the office. Enough to scramble his memory, sure, but not enough to break his skull.

No blood, no deaths, no kids.  That's what I call a good case.


And Charlie had been fast-tracked for a reason, before he got up the noses of the higher-ups.  Boy reads bank records like they're kids' primers. It hadn't taken them more than a few hours to wrap up the case and give it to the locals, all but with a bow on top.

Leaving the rest of the day for sight-seeing.


There were churches, apparently, old ones, that Charlie thought were worth looking at. Elienne had wished him joy of them and trudged off into what the locals had assured her was the right part of town for shopping.

Nothing that she'd have called a shop, not really, just poky little rooms no bigger that Elienne's own living room crowded with shelves and tables of things for sale.  Most seemed to sell only one sort of thing, too, which made for a lot of unnecessary tramping into the little hot rooms and back out into the chilly wind that funnelled through the narrow alleys and blasted up through the wooden walkways, as Elienne tried to find something to take home for Robert that was cheap enough for what was left of her travel allowance, nice enough not to be obviously cheap, and small enough not to get her stuck with an excess baggage charge on the Interbus home.


The last requirement was the hardest. Dirtsiders don't spend much time thinking about mass-lift costs, obviously.

Pausing in her search to buy a crisp sugared pastry baked in a cone, Elienne was eating it while looking in the window of a little shop that sold nothing but shoes when a familiar pretty face appeared reflected next to hers.

She swallowed a mouthful of sweet dough. "Find your church?"

Etay's reflection smiled. "More or less.  Find your souvenir?"

"Not yet," Elienne said. "Look at those shoes. You ever see anything like that? The soles are are some kind of stone, sparkling like that. You'd go slipping all over the place if you tried to run in them."

"I don't think they're for running," Etay said.

Elienne snorted. "Hardly anyone thinks their shoes are for running when they get dressed in the morning, Charlie.  And then you and me are standing in an alley somewhere looking down at some poor cow, and shaking our heads, and thinking that a little bit more speed and none of the three of us would have needed to be there."

The corner of Etay's mouth twitched up slightly. "There's a cheerful thought to have when looking at dancing shoes."

"You're a romantic, farm boy, that's your problem."  She turned to looked at him, and paused. "Had time for shopping after all, did you? That's a nice looking coat."

"It's a ..." Etay looked down, brushing at the rich fabric. "A loan."

"A loan. From one of the local boys?"

He shook his head wordlessly.

"So a complete stranger just walked up to you and lent you a coat, then? A nice one like that?" Elienne asked dryly.

"No," Etay said quietly. "Not a stranger."

Elienne sighed, but not aloud. Seeing two sons through adolescence had given her plenty of practice prying information from young men. Never let them sense your impatience. She looked back at the flimsy shoes with their silly high heels and impractical soles. "So who else do you know in Debreth?"

"I ran into someone," Etay said.

"And who would that be, then, Charlie?"

Etay's reflection looked away from hers.  "Amieta."

It took Elienne a moment to place the name.  "Your fruit woman?"

He smiled a little at that. "Yes."

Elienne made her voice neutral. "The one with the sister." The podder sister.


The pretty, podder sister.


"The very same," Etay said mildly.

"And she gave you that very nice coat," Elienne said flatly.

"Lent, not gave," Etay corrected.

"And why would she do that, Charlie?" Elienne asked.

He shrugged slightly.  "It's cold out?"

Elienne did sigh aloud at that.  Oh, Charlie.  "I don't suppose it was much of a surprise to you to run into this woman here, was it? Given how quick you were to volunteer us both for this little trip?"

"Not all that much of a surprise, no," Etay admitted. "Did you know syrup comes from trees?"

"No, but I always thought it tasted funny," Elienne said. "And don't change the subject, Charlie. We're partners, remember? If you're neck deep in the shit, so am I.  And - " She turned and tipped her head back to look up at him.  "My nose is closer to the ground than yours, farm boy.  So do you think that when you're next planning an interstellar trip to stalk a capsuleer you could let me know what you're dragging me into?"

Etay regarded her mildly. "Stalking seems a little strong."

"Stalking is what it'll say in the complaint, if she makes one.  It's not like you've got any official business with her, is it?"

"No," Etay admitted.

"Is she going to make a complaint?" Elienne asked.

He shook his head. "I don't think so. She gave me tea. And lent me her father's coat."

"Wait, the pilot lent you the coat?" Elienne said.

"And gave me tea."

Oh, Fortune fuck me with feathers. She's pretty and she's kind enough to give a man a warm drink on a cold day.

It wasn't that much, all in all, but then, it didn't take much when it came to young men and pretty girls, in Elienne's experience. Or pretty boys,for Tomas.  A polite smile was as good as a declaration of love, a basic acquaintance with the inside of a textbook was a sign of genius, the ability to walk across a room without tripping over the furniture was the hallmark of incomparable grace ...

And elementary hospitality is no doubt proof this podder is as kind and virtuous as all eight graces, as far as poor Charlie's concerned. 

Elienne shivered, and tugged her coat tighter.  That's where all the trouble in the world starts, she thought.

With pretty faces and foolish hearts.

"Charlie," Elienne said carefully. "She's a capsuleer and a confessed murderer and she's richer than sin-cake and twice as deadly. You do remember all that, don't you?"

"Sure," Etay said. "Sure, Eli. I remember all that."

Elienne studied him, squinting against the cold wind whipping up the alley. Her heart sank a little at what she saw.

Sure, he remembers, she thought.

Care, now.

That'd get me a different answer.

Not one that would do either of them any good, though.

Elienne dusted the sugar off her hands and shoved them in her pockets with a sigh. "Come on, farm boy.  I still need to find something to make Robert forgive me for running off with a pretty boy like you after twenty-seven years of marriage."

Etay laughed, just a puff of air. "There's a shop by the river that might have something," he said.

"Oh, yeah?" Elienne turned in that direction. "Your fruit woman tell you that? Or her pretty podder sister?"

Etay fell into step beside her, shortening his stride to match hers. "The sister," he said. "Ciarente."

Elienne hunched her shoulders against the wind. Ciarente.


First name terms with a capsuleer. 


Not a wise place to stand.


Not a safe one, either.


She glanced at Charlie and bit back the words.

Can't make his mistakes for him, any more than I could make them for Jules or Tomas.


He'll find out soon enough.


Find out that there were cold days no cup of tea could proof a man against.

No borrowed coat, either.


Even one as fine as that.


Elienne took one hand from her pocket and tucked it through the crook of Charlie's elbow as he walked beside her.  Can't make his mistakes for him, no. But with, now ... that's something else.


Partners are partners. And what's his is mine. Poisoned fruit, podders ...


And mistakes as well.

An Acquired Taste

It was yellow and it was almost round and it smelt a little bit like the laundry powder Eli's mother used to use, and a little bit like the juice Jules used to insist on for breakfast.

But better than either.

Capitaine Elienne Desorlay looked from the object that had just appeared on her desk to the man who'd put it there, and back. "What is it?"

Lieutenant  Charles Etay smiled at her, bland and innocent. "It's a rimpon."

"Baise moi." Eli sniffed again. Yes, definitely laundry.  Maybe with a little bit of that flavoring they put in the double-price coffee at that place on Rue Gervain. "And what's a rimpon when it's at home?"

"It's a fruit," Etay said calmly.

Eli snorted. "I can see it's a fucking fruit, farmboy. Where did you get it?"  Merde, there's some sort of fruit black-market and Charlie's the mastermind. It's the only explanation.


Etay pulled out the chair from his desk and turned it around, sinking into it to rest his arms on her desk and his chin on his arms, staring at the golden not-quite-globe with a faint smile. "Someone gave it to me."

"Someone gave you a rinpond," Eli said flatly.

"Rimpon," he corrected. "Yes."

"For what?" Eli eyed him suspiciously. "You selling that fine body of yours for produce, farmboy?"

The smile turned into a laugh, almost soundless. "She said I was too pretty for her."

Eli poked the rimpon with one finger. "I bet you don't hear that too often."

"No," Charlie admitted.  "Not too often."

"So she gave you this as a consolation prize? Who's she, anyway?"

"Amieta.  And I think it was more of a reward," Etay said thoughtfully. "Or something."

Eli narrowed her eyes. "Reward? For what?"

Etay shrugged. ""Dunno. I got her sister to confess to murder and arrested her CTO on an outstanding warrant, and she gave me that."

Now it makes sense. "Have you tested it? For poison?"

"Poison?" Etay said, sounding shocked. "She wouldn't poison it, Eli. It's fruit!"

"Fortune fuck me and save me from innocent boys," Eli picked up her handset. "Yeah, connect me through to the lab. I have a - "

Etay reached out one long arm and pushed the button to cut the connection. "There won't be anything left of it by the time they run their tests. Or at least, that's what they'll tell us. And it isn't poisoned." He smiled. "Amieta wouldn't do that, Eli. She'd just throw me out an airlock or something. And not waste the rimpon."

"Uh-huh."  Eli folded her arms. "Well, you eat it then."

He picked up the rimpon in one hand and studied it. "I will."

Eli shook her head. "I'll make sure and tell a lot of nice lies about you at your funeral. So, you made a couple of arrests? They must be happy with you upstairs."

"One arrest," Etay corrected. "And I don't think they're miserable, no."

"One?" Eli asked. "You said ... what, the sister was the CTO too?"

"The CTO is a CTO," Etay said. "Sarakai Voutelen, you can look her up. Warrant made out, oh, years ago.  Nasty little incident at a colony. Lot of deaths."

"And that's who you went looking for?"

Etay shook his head, smiling. "No. M'selle Voutelen was a bonus. Like the rimpon. No, I was looking for the sister. M'selle Ciarente Roth."

Eli scratched her nose. "And you found her."

Etay tossed the rimpon into the air and caught it. "Yeah."

Fortune fuck me, it's like getting Jules to tell me about his day at school. "And she confessed, this Ciarente Roth."

Etay nodded.

"But you didn't arrest her."

"No." Etay's gaze traveled from the rimpon to Eli, and then back. "She's a podder."

"Baise moi."


"Exactly."  Etay set the fruit down.

"And you met her? The podder?"

"I did."

There were a dozen questions that Eli knew she should be asking. Questions like What fucking murder, farmboy? and Is this connected to all those files from the University of Caille? But ordinary human curiosity won over all of them.  "What was she like, when you met her?"

The corner of Etay's mouth twitched up. "She had a whole bowl of apples on her kitchen counter."

"Well, sure," Eli said. "Podders are rich, aren't they? Like, crazy rich?"

"Guess so."  

"So," Eli said, and shrugged.  "I'd have a whole bowl of apples on my kitchen counter, if I was crazy rich.  I'd have a kitchen counter big enough for a bowl, too. So what was she like besides rich?"

"Not what I expected," Etay said thoughtfully.

"What did you expect, then?'

He gave her a rueful smile. "You know. Like the holos. Master of the cluster? Or mistress, I suppose.  Guns and dangerous stares and so on. But she was ... "

"What?"

Etay shrugged. "Soft. Gentle, you know?"

Uh oh. Eli hadn't raised three sons without knowing the signs. "Pretty?"

Etay shrugged again, but his fair complexion betrayed him, the faint color clear in his cheeks. "I suppose you could say that. I didn't really notice."

"Sure you didn't," Eli said dryly. "Very pretty?"

"I guess." Etay looked intently at the rimpon, rolling it back and forth with one finger.

"Mmmhmm." Eli folded her arms. "Farmboy. This woman, this capsuleer. She might look sweet, like that rimpon. But she's poison."

"Rimpon isn't sweet," Etay corrected her. "An acquired taste, I was told. Some people eat them with sugar." He picked up the fruit and studied it. "And Ciarente Roth is just a girl, Eli."

"Charlie," Eli said flatly. "She's a podder."

"She's still just a girl," Etay told the rimpon.

Just a girl, yeah, right. Fortune fuck me, there's no way this ends well.


She looked at him, SCID's literal and figurative golden-haired boy, slouched in his chair with the easy grace of a man who'd never made a clumsy movement in his life, and her heart ached the way it had when she'd found Tomas crying in the cupboard beneath the stairs and had no good answer for his tearful question But Maman, why doesn't Jacques like me the way I like him?


Pretty as he was, her farmboy had nothing to catch a podder's jaded glance, used to the best eye candy the cluster could offer, and better for him that it's so, bad as that'll hurt.  The air was thin where capsuleers lived, up in the rarefied heights, too thin for mere mortals to breathe long and live. 


Oh, Charlie.  


Why did she have to be pretty?


The silence stretched out, thinner and thinner, until finally Eli shook her head, and sighed.


"What?" Etay asked.


Eli nodded at the rimpon. "Are you going to eat all of that?"  she asked.


Etay gave her a small, slow smile. "You want some?"


"We're partners, aren't we?" Eli said. "What's yours is mine."


Etay nodded. "That's the rules," he said.

"That's the rules," Eli agreed.

What's yours is mine, all right, she thought as Etay turned back to his desk and rummaged in a drawer for a knife. 

What's yours is mine.

Poisoned fruit, podders and all.

An Excellent Day

Lieutenant Charles Etay carefully wiped the last of the beard-suppressant cream from his neck and dropped the towelette in the waste-chute.

The spotted glass of the unbreakable but not unrustable mirror showed him a grey version of himself, pocked with brown.  Charlie smoothed his hair and made a note to tell Eli in his next message that, at least in the Lustrevik Local Lease hotel, he was no longer too pretty to be a policeman.

He hoped Eli had enjoyed the orange he'd given her as a part-bribe, part-apology for leaving her to cover their caseload alone while he was on the other side of the Cluster.

Of course she enjoyed it, he thought as he took the single step that took him out of the 'fresher. It's an orange.


He had to step up onto the bed to make enough room to close the 'fresher door, and he had to bend double as he did so to avoid cracking his head on the roof of the room. The mirror in the 'fresher was the only one, and it wasn't big enough to show him more than half his face at a time, but from what he could see when he looked down at himself the mattress had done a better job of pressing his shirt and suit over night than it had of giving him a decent night's sleep. His shoes were as polished as paper towelette and water could make them, and his nails were clean.


Good as it gets, given the circumstances.


He could have afforded a better room, even a better hotel.  Selling the second of the two oranges from his carefully nurtured tree, or tree-let, really, had netted him enough for a return Interbus ticket to Heimatar and a fair bit left over, but a more expensive room would have meant fewer nights here.

It would be another year before he had two more oranges to trade and to sell: Charlie intended to make the most of things while he was here.

Perhaps it wouldn't be too much longer.  The Caldari podder who said she wasn't a pilot,  Amieta Invelen, had said she'd talk to the pilot he was interested in. Her sister, although Charlie knew every relative Ciarente Roth had and none of them were Caldari.  

No promises, Amieta'd said. But I'll see what I can do. Get it over with, see what I can do to get you off the station as quickly as possible.


And promised him a rimpon, as well. If things work out okay.

As respectable as he could make himself, Lieutenant Charles Etay tucked what was left of his meager bankroll in an inside pocket, locked the flimsy door behind him, and headed down the corridor towards the docks.

A possible end to his investigation, and fruit as well.

There was every chance it was going to be an excellent day.

Apples and Oranges

Capitaine Elienne Desorlay looked at the screen of her terminal in bemusement. What by the face of Fortune is the University of Caille sending us copies of their cloning contracts for? "Farmboy, those files from Eletta you asked for are - " She turned in her seat and forgot what she was about to say. She gave her partner an incredulous look.  "Is that ... an apple?" she asked.

Lieutenant Charles Etay gave her his sweetest choirboy smile.  "Yep."

Elienne leaned forward to get a closer look, the tiny silver knife in Etay's hand catching the light as he scraped the rich red skin from the fair-to-Fortune, real-life, actual apple that he held. "Where did you get it?"

"My mother has an orchard."  The skin came off in one long, curling strip, and Etay set it carefully on the desk.

"An orchard? Like, with lots of apples?"  Elienne poked at the long curlicue of ridiculous red with one finger, then surreptitiously licked that finger in case some taste of real, grown-on-a-tree apple had managed to stick to it. Nope.  


"Yeah, with lots of apples," Etay said, his quiet, slightly hoarse voice matter-of-fact, as if everybody had a childhood with lots of apples in it. "But mostly for sale. We only got to eat them for special occasions." He nodded towards the apple-skin lying on the desk. "You can dry that, you know. It keeps its scent."

"Uh-huh." Elienne watched him slice the apple in half, then quarters, then eighths. "And your mother sends you apples from her orchard, here?"

"One. Every year," he said. "For my birthday."

"It's your birthday?"

"It is," he said, with the tiny twitch of the corner of his mouth that Elienne had learned to recognize as his real smile, "my birthday."

She could smell the tart tang of the apple now as Etay cut out the seeds from the side of each slice. Her mouth watered. Normally, if she'd been eating, she'd have offered him half. Normally, if he had something that looked good, she'd ask Are you going to eat all of that?  It was the rules, everybody knew that.

But the rules applied where it was turn and turn about. Anyone could get a peshorky from the stall outside SCIDHQ, anyone could walk the extra block to the cafe that made shrip-and-chocolate coffees.

That apple, that was something else.

Elienne swallowed hard, and tore her eyes away from the actual, not re-fabricated cellulose proteins, ripened-under-a-sky, apple.   "Happy birthday," she said, a little bit thickly with her saliva glands working overtime at the tantalizing scent in her near proximity, and turned away.

"Thank you," Etay said.

Elienne concentrated on the files on her screen. Clone activations, Eletta system, 24/5 last year, for ... why?

"Eli?" Etay said.

"Mmm?" She turned back to see him holding out one white crescent toward her, white but already browning at the edges like she'd read real apples do once they're cut.

Her hand wanted to reach out and snatch it and stuff it in her mouth before he could change his mind.  The impulse was so strong that for a second Elienne thought she'd actually do it, grab the piece of fruit from Etay's fingers and hunch over it. Maybe growling.

Somewhere within her, she found the reserves of decency and discipline to say "No, Charlie. It's your birthday apple."

Etay gave her another of his choirboy smiles, as sweet and as bland as a painted cherub. "Don't you have a birthday?"  When she didn't answer he held the little white sliver out further. "Go on, Eli. You'll like it, I promise."

An offer made once is manners. An offer made twice is genuine. That was the rules, too.

Elienne took the fragile morsel from him. She made herself wait, looking at it, smelling it, feeling the slight give in the crispiness of it, the sticky juice on her fingers, wanting to be able to remember this moment in years to come.

Maybe tell my grandkids, if Jules ever gets around to giving me any.


Once upon a time, Granmamare had a real apple, one that was grown on a tree, and everything!


It tasted sweet, yes, and not sweet, at the same time.  A flavor she could recognize as apple from the packets with that word on the label, but as much like that sickly-sweet taste as the giant ball of flaming gas outside the station was like the pale yellow globes set into the ceiling of the station.

Elienne closed her eyes and held the piece of fruit in her mouth until it was nothing more than mush, and then, reluctantly, swallowed.

Etay was watching her. "Good?" he asked.

She nodded wordlessly. Good.

Etay ate a piece of the apple himself, thoughtfully, showing, Elienne thought, proper respect for it even if he had grown up surrounded by trees full of them. "It's a shame you can't grow them in pots," he said. "Oranges, now, orange trees don't mind a pot."

"No?"

He shook his head. "No. Never get very big, of course, so there's not much fruit. I get two a year, if I'm lucky."

Elienne  gaped at him. "You have an orange tree?"

Etay gave her another beatific smile. "More of an orange shrub, really."

Apples, oranges ... man probably grows shrip in his window box, too. "There's a lot more than meets the eye to you, Charlie," Elienne said.

Etay's gaze flicked to her, easy good humor gone, eyes very level and face very still. After a pause, a pause that went three seconds too long, he smiled. "Could say the same for all of us, I guess."  He picked up another sliver of fruit and offered it to her.  "Our job's'd be boring if not, hey?"

Elienne reached out and took the slice of apple. "Nothing wrong with boring, farmboy."

"Mmm," Etay said. He picked up the long curl of apple skin from his desk and slowly wound it around one finger. Against his white skin, the deep red looked like a wound. Elienne watched as he twisted and untwisted it, the edges fraying slightly with the movement.

"What?" she asked at last, her tone unreasonably sharp.

He let the apple skin slide loose from his fingers and coil itself on the desk again, and looked up to meet her eyes.  "Nothing wrong with boring, Eli."

"That's right."

"Except boring doesn't have apples, now, does it?"

There was no reason for the hair on the back of Elienne's neck to raise at that, no reason at all.

But it did.