The first thing you'll notice here is the shift in POV. Her name is still Kat, yes, but I was starting to think of her as a person, instead of a puppet, and narrate from inside her. Unfortunately I was still trying to overtly sexualize her, as shown in the lengthy physical descriptions and her catty dialogue with Aries. I think it says a lot about how we were all programmed to look at female action characters, prior to Buffy.
The main problem with this version, though, is it just doesn't go anywhere. I waste ten pages before she even gets on the planet, and spend paragraphs infodumping and analyzing things that could have been said in a sentence or two--or spread out over several sentences, strategically placed. I hadn't yet learned to do two things at once.
Furthermore, all the clichés are still in place: the haunted anti-hero waking up from a nightmare, then doing martial arts? And the mirror scene is priceless. I knew better, even then; I just hadn't yet worked out an alternative.
Kat opened her eyes. The room was black, the air felt so thick and pressurized that Kat, still in the sweaty grip of nightmare, had a horrible but mercifully brief sensation of being suffocated. She struggled up into a half-sitting position, the blankets dragging down on her, and realized that she was awake. There was a hard ache in her hands and she raised her head to see she was gripping the padded side rails of her bunk so tightly that her nails had split the vinyl and her knuckles were turning blue. She pried them loose and let her numbed hands fall limply to the mattress, grimacing when a sinister tingling spread from her wrists to her elbows.
She lay there for a minute, letting her head clear while the nightmare eased its grip on her chest. There was a fully justified reason for her subconscious to be foisting nightmares on her, and she knew it, but she didn't want to think about it, so she reached over her head with one arm-now prickling with electricity as the blood began to move-and picked up the phone beside the bed. She had to look to make sure her fingers were gripping it, but she was able to press the "0" button and lift the receiver to her ear.
"How can I help you?" the digitized switchboard inquired politely.
"Whrr-" Kat began, and had to clear her throat. "Where are we?"
"Your Starwind Luxury Liner is currently traveling at a speed of Factor Six, approaching the Charon system, with an Estimated Arrival Time of six hours, twelve minutes to Orbit Docking Status."
Kat hung up and let the receiver fall beside her pillow. Her hands felt like they were being charged up with a cattle prod, and that computer was too perky for this early in the morning. Living in an artificial atmosphere frequently made her sleep heavily and wake sluggish, and she didn't want to arrive planetside functioning at less than Fully Alert, as the computer would say.
She stretched and rolled on her stomach. If Kat had believed in karma, she would have figured she was tempting fate by returning to Ariston. Since she didn't, she had told herself repeatedly that there was no reason to worry. But ignoring the precognitive urges might turn out to be worse; she could name a significant number of times when gut instinct had saved her life. She wasn't sure if the nightmares were her instincts talking, or if she was merely skittish about seeing Ariston again after so long.
Groaning, Kat decided that she was just going to make herself crazy if she kept lying there in the dark with nothing to do but think. She sat up and reached toward the ceiling, wigging her fingers to see if they were under her control again. They were. She tossed the covers back and slid to the floor, scrunching her toes in the carpet as she twisted from side to side, popping her back. Well, at least I'm returning in better style than I left, she thought wryly.
Kat kept telling herself she had taken this job for the money, although the truth was, she could have bought this Starliner if she'd felt like it, and she knew of a few investments that would enable her to retire quite comfortably, when she decided to. She was only thirty. There was no reason to hang it up yet. Particularly since her body showed no hint of the tightening which was the first sign of betrayal.
She sat on the floor and spread her legs wide, bending forward from the waist until her chest was pressed to the floor between her knees. She laid that way for a minute, feeling the comfortable pull across her thighs. She knew she didn't look more than twenty, and she also knew that that deception was one of her most useful weapons. Her body was composed of long muscle, trim and elastic and seductive. She was just under average in height for a woman, but fine bones and a slim waist made her look smaller. She moved with a quick, fluid grace, her manner always alert but somehow indifferent, long hair like maple syrup spilling ignored and immaculate down her back, eyes that no one ever quite got a good look into and always seemed to be narrowed in amusement.
People asked her if she was a dancer. Sometimes Kat said yes, because she thought it was funny. She supposed she was a bit of a compulsive liar, but in her line of work, it was a healthy trait to have.
She hadn't had to improvise much on this trip, because her shipmates had pretty much kept to themselves, and that suited her fine. Her first trip to the dining room had confirmed her suspicion that she was only one of two women on the ship, the other one being an eighty-year-old tycoon who was probably going to Ariston for God-only-knew what kind of last-ditch medical procedure that was illegal in Central. The old lady had smelled like metal under her perfume, and she had that hard-drawn, hell-bent look of somebody with a lot of money and not much time left. Technology offered lots of ways to cheat death, but not all of them were legal, and some were so dehumanizing that only those with seriously scarred consciences cared to try them.
That single trip to the dining room had also confirmed her suspicion that about half of the "businessmen" sharing the voyage were dealing in something equally illegal. By her estimate, there were about three druggies, a couple of gunrunners, and several general-purpose thugs. Since none of them had been obliging enough to wear signs pasted to their foreheads, she had no way of knowing whether any of them was her tag, but they had all eyed her through the course of the meal. She knew she was conspicuous; this far out on the Rim, things were rough enough that a woman was not often seen traveling alone, much less a young, attractive woman. She might have simply been a string, a non-suspicious individual used for striking or fulfilling a deal, in which case she had her own business to attend to and was fairly harmless. On the other hand, a good-looking woman made an excellent tag, if her mark was stupid enough to let her get close. Kat was careful not to pay attention to anybody, knowing that if they thought she was a stringer they would leave her alone. But there was always a chance somebody would actually recognize her.
She seriously doubted there would be any trouble while still on the ship. This was a luxury cruiser belonging to a reputable company. Neutral turf, as it were. No, if anybody was going to try anything on her, it would be after she was planetside, and as far as that went she wasn't really sure anyone was tailing her. But considering the territory, and the reputation of herself and this new "client" she was going to meet, it wouldn't have surprised her. So she kept her eyes open and her head down.
The cruiser wasn't a bad place to hang out, either, since she had nothing better to do. It was quiet and private, the food was good, it had a gym, and there was a good lock on the door. Kat spent her time eating fruit and cheese, reading and working out. It was almost as good as a monastic retreat. After ten days in jump and no incidents, Kat had just about assured herself that this trip was going to be routine and probably even therapeutic. When her business was completed and she went home three million richer, she would have shaken off the emotional stigma Ariston held for her.
Psychology was a hobby of Kat's. She figured she was pretty healthy for somebody who'd had a childhood like hers. She also knew that any criminal psychologist would claim her traumatic youth had made her a sociopath and driven her to her chosen vocation, and she supposed it was true, to a certain degree. The trauma of her childhood had made her very strong, physically and emotionally, and just enough of a biological deviant to put her on the fringes of society. Spending her adolescent years in a highly criminalized environment had not stripped her of a conscience, but had in fact put a highly objective slant on her own personal code of ethics. She was not a sociopath. Everybody was good at something; everybody had to make a living.
Kat brought her legs together and bent her knees, arching her body into a backbend, then kicked her feet into the air and pushed up until she was standing on her hands. She did this to amuse herself, watching herself in the mirrored closet doors as she did so. Her shirt fell down around her neck, revealing a well-toned abdomen and back. She admired herself for a minute, then flipped, landing on her feet and whipping around one leg in a chin-level kick that would have flattened anyone standing in front of her. She followed through with a series of snap kicks, blocked an imaginary knife-thrust and flipped her invisible opponent to the ground, bringing down her fist in a punishing strike. Satisfied that the specter was defeated, she glanced up at the mirror and quickly smoothed out the intense expression on her face.
Who are you fighting? Justin had asked her occasionally, when she got particularly vehement in their training sessions.
Whoever's in my way, she'd answered. But she had been violent in those days, and still angry about a lot of things that were, if not forgiven, at least mostly forgotten by now. Of course, remembering that she had been angry made her inadvertently remember why she had been angry, which made her think about her reasons for coming back, both the professed and the possibly subconscious ones, and that made her think about the money. Three million was a lot. To be sure, this guy Aries was situated on the Rim, so he had to throw in the travel costs and some time compensation to make it worthwhile, but it was more questionable that he was bothering to hire outside help. Men of his magnitude and vocation tended to keep a whole stable full of hotshots for just this purpose. That fact had made it easy for Kat to stay away from the Rim; there just wasn't any business out here.
This had to be something big. Something dangerous and showy . . . and possibly very reputation-enhancing, if she pulled it off. And if it was too scary, she could always refuse. Thoughtfully, Kat reached into her bag and pulled out her hairbrush, taking it with her to the bed, where she sat cross-legged and began brushing out the ends of her hair. She needed a trim. She wondered if this Aries character was going to offer to put her up. She wondered if she should accept. She figured she should probably walk easy with him, at least to the point where she said yea or nay to his proposal, and if she said yes, she could be cool until the job was actually done.
Six more hours until docking. Kat drew the brush across the top of her head and tossed it to the floor, then flopped on her back on the pillows. She might as well enjoy the bed; she wouldn't be able to relax once she got planetside, and that was assuming everything went according to plan.
Kat had herself dressed and her luggage packed long before her phone rang the next morning, delivering a far-too-enthusiastic ship-wide wake up call. It took her several rings to locate the handset, because it had slipped down between the mattress and its cushioned bunk rails. After the computer had blurted out its initial shrill greeting in her ear, she hung it up, shouldered her bag, and headed out to the dining room to see about breakfast.
She was enjoying hot chocolate and whole-wheat croissants with strawberry preserves when she caught the rising strains of Mrs. Wallabe's voice out in the promenade. The old lady was having it out with somebody; the other voice Kat didn't recognize. The strawberry comfiture was very good.
"I will not," the old lady was saying. "I paid far too much money for this trip to be treated like a common criminal upon arriving!"
Interested, Kat perked up her ears. Was the old lady really smuggling something after all? Or had somebody tipped off the authorities to the arrival of a black-market medical customer?
"I'm sorry, Mrs. Wallabe, but the situation only occurred two days ago. We were in jump, and it would have been impossible to turn around, even if the communication could have reached us." That was the concierge, who was rather appropriately named Les, and he was coming into the dining room as he spoke, scanning the breakfast crowd. Kat and the handful of men who were in the room looked at him questioningly. He slapped his hands together with the air of someone anticipating a bad reaction to the news he had to give.
"Folks," he said. "I've got some unexpected news. Now first, I want to assure everybody that we have safely reached our port in orbit around Ariston. The ship's fine, the crew's fine, everything's safe and secure. But, here's the problem. Most of us know that, since we're so far out on the Rim of the Embassy's jurisdiction, there's a lot of problem with crime . . . uh, smuggling, that sort of thing. So," he drew a deep breath, "two days ago, in response to a series of riots in the west end of town, the city government, in cooperation with local law enforcement, placed the city under temporary martial law."
There was an audible gasp in the dining room. Much more significant, although less perceptible, was the sense of tensing in the room, a tightening of the air as emotions snapped into high gear.
Kat's primary reaction was irritation, because she didn't know what this situation was going to mean for her job. She was quirked at the possibility that she might have come all this way for nothing, and even more quirked at the delay, because she knew that martial law probably meant a blockade. She wasn't particularly worried about it; although she was probably as guilty in her motives as anybody else on the ship, she wasn't carrying anything incriminating. The concierge's next words followed the pattern of her thoughts.
"What that means for us," he said, "Is that anyone who wants to dock and go planetside has to submit to a baggage inspection. If you choose not to leave the ship, you are of course permitted to contact by phone anyone on the surface you wish to talk to. If you wish to return to the point at which you boarded the ship, Starwind travel will honor your original tickets toward the return trip free of charge."
There was a relieved sound from the young man sitting at the table on Kat's left; he was one of those which she suspected had a legitimate business reason for visiting Ariston. She pitied him.
"So!" the concierge smacked his hands together again, this time with the attitude of someone who has done his part, thank you very much. "Those of you who will be returning with us have only to notify me in my office before we open boarding to new passengers, which will be four hours from now. Those of you who are going planetside have been requested to gather your luggage and bring it to the airlock for disboarding. There are two, uh, military gentlemen who will be conducting inspections prior to anyone disboarding the ship. They have requested that you all have passports ready, and I'm to remind you that this is just a formality, in a state of emergency like this they have to inspect all persons and cargo coming or going. Any questions, then?"
"I've got one," Mrs. Wallabe put in hotly. "I want to know who the ignoramus was who didn't find out about this. It's bad enough I risked life and limb coming through dead space travel, but then to be treated like a common criminal when I get here-twelve hours late, I might add!"
The concierge hastened to explain to Mrs. Wallabe that, even if they had known, it would have been impossible to turn around two days out of jump on the fuel reserves they had, et cetera.
Kat had a question too, but she didn't think it was prudent to ask, even if she thought Les the travel host had an answer. What had happened to make Ariston's government declare martial law after all this time, and so abruptly? It wasn't like someone had suddenly noticed the place was a sewer and decided to clean it up. She couldn't imagine anything that might have been big enough and destructive enough to make the police take action. Most of the police in Ariston were on two different payrolls, anyway.
Curiosity had Kat firmly by the nose, and she sank her teeth into her last croissant, thinking that this turn of events might be in some way related to the reason Reece Aries had hired her. Perhaps he had even seen it coming, and had wanted her to prevent it, or remedy it in some way. By the time she had finished her chocolate, she had made up her mind-it was a short step-to go ahead and connect with Aries, see what he wanted. She had a good cover, and money enough; she could back out if things were too ugly.
She dawdled long enough to ensure she was not the first one off the ship. She had a good idea that the last one would be Mrs. Wallabe, ranting all the while if she left at all. Kat had her sunglasses on, the photosensitive variety that got darker when she got into the brighter light. She wore them low on her nose and let wisps of hair hand around her face, knowing that it made her look younger. The photo on her passport was an oldish one, from when she'd still had bangs, and the name was a careful forgery, backed up by an elaborately boring credit file created by one of Justin's more talented nethead friends.
She showed it to one of the "military gentlemen" while the other unzipped her bag and shuffled through its contents. He came up with a fancy camera in its case, some clothes, a notebook, and a few personal items.
"Tabitha Morris," the guard with her passport read. "Twenty-two, citizen of Earth, graduate of Venus Art Academy. Why so far out on the Rim, Ms. Morris?"
Kat shifted an enormous wad of gum to her cheek like a cow. "I'm a photographer. I came out here to shoot the landscape. You know, the whole barren thing. The old quarries. The Rim planets are some of the only places in the galaxy that haven't been bent to the human will. They're so wild. It's great portfolio stuff." She added mentally, And I heard the stardust was great, y'know?
The second guard was inspecting the bottom of her bag for extra seams or zippers. Kat could have told him he was wasting his time; no one had ever yet found the false bottom. "Now that this coup is going on, I'm like, wow, I could be the only one out here in the middle of it, ya know? I know plenty of magazines that would kill for scoops on this stuff."
"It's not a coup, ma'am," the guard with her passport said, handing it back to her. "The government of Ariston is fully in control of the situation."
"Right. Sure. Do you think I could shoot the soldiers? With my camera, I mean," she added hastily, when his eyebrows lifted. "Are they all gathered out in front of City Hall? I remember when Bridgeport was taken over by terrorists. I was real little, I mean, but I saw films about it." The young soldier in front of her, Kat guessed, was about three years younger than she was pretending to be. He would have still been in diapers at the time of the Bridgeport Massacre.
The other guard righted her bag, set the camera back inside, and zipped it up. "All clear, ma'am. Thank you for your cooperation."
"Sure," Kat drawled, and punctuated with a snap of her gum as she glided through the airlock. Well, that was one obstacle out of the way. She stroke briskly down the corridor and had to pause in front of the doors on the other end; they slid open with a whispering hiss and she walked off the ship into the orbiting dock.
Two more soldiers greeted her on the other side, but they didn't delay her. She asked which direction was the shuttle gate and they pointed her that way. A shuttle departed for the planet every thirty minutes, and it took about an hour to get to the surface. Kat checked her watch and resigned herself to waiting some more. Inter-system space travel was serious business, not merely because of the dangers involved, but also because it took so blasted long. She'd spent ten days on the cruiser and counted herself lucky because she'd gotten on at the closest available stop to where she was going. If she'd departed form somewhere near Central, it could have taken three weeks or more to get this far. It was quicker, of course, on a military vehicle, as opposed to the leisurely-moving passenger liner. Kat didn't think she'd be traveling on any military ships anytime soon. She wandered around the station, bought some beef jerky and a magazine, and found a bench, to wait.
Kat was not prepared for her own reaction when she stepped out of the shuttle and got her first look at Ariston's docking ports. The first thing that hit her was the smell, and since scientists believe that smell is the sense most closely linked to memory, for a minute Kat was almost completely immobilized by déjà vu. Nothing's changed, she thought. There was a strong smell of sulphur and ammonia in the air; the acrid scent of rocket fuel and a flat, yeasty odor, like beer. There were men hustling everywhere, carrying crates and weapons, dirty, mean-looking children moving in packs from one end to the other, and gang members, standing around in small queues and eyeing each other.
There were more soldiers than she remembered. They were in pairs, wearing gray uniforms with the EMPR's army insignia on the shoulders. So many of them, she thought. What happened here?
Well, her first point of order was to find Reece Aries. He'd said he would meet her here. Kat took a look around, then turned her bag so that the fastenings were on the side next to her body, and put her hands on the strap, holding her elbows against her pockets. Old habits die hard.
If she turned left, she would only be going deeper into the shipping docks and the nasty end of town. If she turned right, she would run into the taxi lines, the fancy hotels, and the ritzy neighborhood; in reality, no less dangerous, just prettier. She turned right, past the loading ramps, circling around luggage racks and motorized lift vehicles. She could feel eyes on her. She kept her head forward and shot sideways glances through her sunglasses. The gang members were watching her. The packs of rodent children were watching her. The suited businessmen were watching her. In fact, the only occupants of the docks who seemed not to have noticed her were the Embassy's soldiers. Strangers themselves, they didn't realize that she didn't belong here.
Kat felt a slight shift in the weight of the strap on her shoulder, not really even a tug; if anything, it grew infinitesimally lighter. She pivoted swiftly on her back foot, snapping her fist around in a hard arc. The heel of her hand connected with something solid that gave a yelp of pain and surprise. The other child, who was so scruffy as to be androgynous, ducked under her swing and rolled to the side with admirable agility, but not quick enough to miss Kat's foot. She planted a kick in the little lizard's backside to help it on its way. It gave a whoop and scuttled back into the crowd, followed by three or four other whooping shapes and the one that Kat had backhanded, one hand clapped to his stinging ear.
Kat shook her wrist and felt the bottom of her bag for cuts. There didn't seem to be any.
"Excuse me. " A hand brushed her arm, and Kat turned, more quickly than she would have under ordinary circumstances, but not without conscious restraint. The last thing she needed right now was to start acting jumpy.
The man in front of her was wearing a suit and a humorless expression. "Are you Tabitha Morris?"
"At the moment," Kat said. "And you are?"
"My name is Jano. I work for Mr. Aries. We've been expecting you." The suit turned and looked across the street to where a limo was parked, and a man who was surely Jano's evil twin stood guard.
"The flight was twelve hours late," Kat said. "I hope you haven't been waiting there since last night."
"We received word this morning that your flight had arrived. Now may we be going?"
"Mais oui," Kat said, and started toward the limo, keeping him in her peripheral vision and staying just out of arm's reach. The guy standing guard at the limo saw her coming and opened the door for her. She marched up to him and stopped. "Is Mr. Aries in there?"
The suit's lips parted. "Get in."
"You tell him to get out first."
"Not here."
Kat shook her head. "Your loss," she said, loud enough to be heard by the car's occupant. She took a couple steps back before she turned around. Jano gave her a look that might have been surprise-she doubted it-and grabbed her arm as she passed. Kat wrapped her fingers around the wrist that gripped her, applied pressure to the tendon, and bent her elbow back until it almost touched his. The fingers went limp. Kat threw his arm down and kept walking. There was an ugly tingle creeping up the back of her neck, but she knew better than to look back, or move faster than a casual stride.
"Ms. Taylor?"
Kat stopped; turned. There was another man standing by the limo, one foot inside, holding up a hand as he called to her. He was in his late forties, tall and knife-lean, wearing a toffee-colored silk suit that made him look friendly and down-to-earth. His smile was calculatedly avuncular. Kat walked back to him, being careful not to look sideways at the monkeys as she did so, and stood there before him. She lifted her hand, showed him her empty palm, and waited. Aries nodded, and made the same gesture. They both lowered their hands and the posture of the two bodyguards relaxed visibly.
Aries put out a hand, and she shook it. "Call me Kat," she said.
"Then you may call me Reece," he said, gripping her hand just a moment longer than necessary. He gestured toward the car. "Shall we?"
The bodyguard reached for her bag as she got near the car, but Kat swung it off her shoulder and slung it inside, smirking pointedly at him. He looked annoyed. "Let it go, Jack," Reece said amiably, and followed Kat into the car. He seated himself across from her and the door closed. "Do you have a naturally suspicious nature, Kat?"
"No, I've cultivated it over years of following this profession."
"Then you're a businesswoman at heart. I apologize for the discourtesy, but those two are paid rather well to keep me alive."
"A pair of trained gorillas would have been cheaper."
"True, but they take too much upkeep and I would have had to leave them in quarantine for six months."
Kat laughed, and Reece smirked at her. "That's better. I would hate to find out you're one of those grim types who mocks everything and yet never finds anything amusing."
"I find far too many things amusing," Kat told him. "Like the situation here in Ariston. How did-"
"Ah." Reece raised a finger. "I know that was a surprise, and I apologize for not warning you. It was a little extreme, but not totally unexpected. Frankly, we were surprised that you didn't turn right around and go back where you came from. But it's a relief that you didn't. It would have been difficult to get somebody else under these circumstances, and you were our first choice, after all."
"Who's 'we?'" Kat asked.
Reece's smile did not change, but his head cocked slightly to one side, and Kat knew that whatever he was about to tell her, it wouldn't be the whole truth. "You realize the uniqueness of the situation, don't you?"
"Ariston being the sewer hole of the EMPR is hardly unique. What's surprising is that the Embassy finally decided to take drastic action. I don't know what they think they'll accomplish, but they're certainly taking action."
"Drastic is putting it mildly. And the Embassy didn't decide to take action. EMPR policy regarding the Rim planets hasn't changed in a hundred and fifty years, since this place was nothing more than a mining camp. They don't care if we kill each other off out here, or sponsor the entire galaxy's drug habit, or blow the whole planet off the map- well, they might not like that, since a lot of the high officials in Central have investments out here, but the only thing that's changed is that some military lab rat got shipped out here when Central decided they couldn't control him anymore, and started taking out his frustrations on me!"
There were a couple of interesting leaps in that thought process, but Kat had managed to grasp the salient point, and conclude that she had guessed right about the job. Reece reached into his breast pocked and pulled out a cigarette, then popped a lighter out of the door panel and lit it. By the time he set the lighter back into its jack, he was reasonably calm again. "Care for one?" he asked. Kat shook her head no.
"My apologies," he said, rubbing his thumb along his jaw. "It's been a very trying week for me. I've suffered some very crippling losses, financially- Not, I should assure you, that your promised salary is in any way jeopardized. If he wasn't causing me so much trouble, I'd have a definite admiration for the man. His single-mindedness is inspiring."
"Devotees to a cause are notorious for their lack of peripheral vision," Kat said. "He's bound to have a weakness."
Reece was shaking his head even as the words left her mouth. "Don't bet on it. He has no loyalty to the city and no way is he loyal to the Embassy. You can bet he didn't get this martial-law idea from them. It's a power thing with him. He's deliberately chosen the path of greatest resistance, and I'm standing at the tollgate." He dragged deeply on his cigarette. "And before you start suspecting I'm an egomaniac, I want to point out that it's not only me who's been a target in this. If the man has any convictions at all, I suspect he's violently opposed to narcotics. So what? They mess up your life. But that doesn't stop them from being a highly lucrative business." Reece inhaled smoke all the way to his belt buckle and gave Kat a look that dared her to disagree. "Everybody has to make a living, right?"
"I tell myself that on a regular basis," she said dryly.
He nodded, a jerk of approval. "And my business happens to be the most lucrative one in the Empire."
Kat winced, ever so slightly. The corruption of the anagram into that term was exclusive to the Rim planets; you didn't dare say it any closer to Central. It was one of the speech idiosyncrasies she had very carefully purged from her vocabulary, and the word had become vulgar to her ear.
"So I take it," she said, "that the Rim patrol is responsible for the blockade on the planet, and that's putting you in a bad position?"
Reece shook his head. "That's only the beginning. Their commander got them started doing planetside busts. The blockade is a minor irritation; it just means I have to be more careful about my smuggling routes. But he's got men on the planet, watching my supply lines, breaking up the processing labs- tailing my couriers! All my runners are being watched constantly, I can't get anything done. Last month they burnt one of my warehouses to the ground. The governor was bullied into calling it an accident, but I know who did it. The governor can't control them, anyway. The whole crew has no sense of protocol!"
Kat nodded, very seriously. "Vigilantes, huh?"
"Exactly."
"Not much better than one of the street gangs out here, I imagine."
He seemed to find this amusing. "The similarities are staggering."
"And you think that killing off their commander is going to make them back off?"
Reece gave her a sharp look, but she kept her poker face smooth. "Yes," he said slowly. "Because he's the one they're loyal to. Without their Captain, the rest of them can be dealt with. And I won't expect you to worry about that."
There was more threat than generosity in his voice. Kat ignored him, smiling peacefully, looking out the window. The car was pulling up a long, long driveway, through a pair of gates that opened and closed smoothly behind them. Kat eyed the gates uneasily through the rear window. She'd had a few bad experiences with tall fences in her lifetime. She didn't expect she'd be breaking in or out of this compound, but the discomfort was there, all the same.
The inside of Reece's estate, what she could see of it, was a triumph of terraforming design. Ariston's natural surface was devoid of any but the most basic life forms, since it bore no surface water and only perfunctory vegetation. It was easy enough to irrigate, but the soil was too metal-heavy to support farming. According to Kat's eye, a load of topsoil about the mass of a small moon had been shipped in to produce this oasis. There were no tall trees, but there was a short, shrubby variety of bush that adapted well and combined with the gravel paths and fountains to create a slightly Oriental effect. At any rate, set amongst all the red rock and bleak sky, the garden was quite lovely.
"This is impressive," Kat said. She was thinking, This is expensive.
"Glad you like it. Ariston must look pretty bare to someone from Earth."
Kat shrugged lightly. "I was born there. I don't know if that really counts." She was not particularly comfortable with his knowing that about her.
The car pulled to a smooth stop and Jano opened the door. Kat followed Reece out and across his carport into the house. The house was big, expensive, classically decorated. Kat had the overall impression of a lot of marble. Saying anything else about it would have quickly become redundant.
"I've had a room prepared for you," Reece was saying, leading the way through the foyer. "This is Francesca; she'll be looking after your needs, show you the gym, pool, library, whatever." He stopped and reached for her hand, covering it with his own. "I'm sorry I have other business to attend to now. I hope you'll enjoy yourself while I'm gone. Dinner will be at seven, and we'll talk more afterwards . . . " His voice trailed off, but he kept hold of her hand, squinting slightly at her face. After a second Kat realized he was trying to see her eyes. She reached up with her free hand and took off her sunglasses.
He was good. He didn't flinch, but his eyes watered and he patted her hand once and then dropped it.
"While you're gone," Kat said conversationally, "I'm going out into the city to buy some supplies and see what's going on. I'll be back by six, and I don't want to get any tails or any grief from George of the Jungle, here." She gestured at Jano, standing nearby and looking surly. "I want a lock on my side of the door and a plate of fresh fruit and cheese by my bed at eleven tonight." Reece was staring at her now, and she smiled at him, humorlessly. "I don't like Swiss cheese or any kind of melon, particularly. I assume there's a curfew?"
Reece nodded, slowly. "Nine."
"Thank you." She put her sunglasses back on. "Lead on, Francesca."
The room was nicely decorated, not too insipid, with a good heavy door and its own bathroom. Kat promptly dismissed the maid and locked the door. She drew the blinds and turned off the lights, swathing the room in darkness, and figured that would have to do, assuming they didn't have an infra-red interior surveillance system. She didn't want to take the time right now to look for bugs, and anyway it made no difference to her whether the lights were on or not. In the darkness, her slitted pupils opened wide, letting in every particle of light and allowing her to see as well as anybody else standing outside in the noon sun. In some ways, her night vision was better than her daytime sight, because ultraviolet light from the sun tends to weaken the eye even in normal people, dulling depth perception and softening delineation of objects. She wore sunglasses so often that her eyes were protected from ultraviolet, and at night shapes grew sharper, taking on an almost 3-D effect. The only part of her vision that suffered at night was color determination, but it rarely mattered.
Kat had been terribly self-conscious about her eyes when she was younger, but nowadays they were something of a trademark. Even people like Reece, who had heard about her deformity, were still taken aback when she presented it to them. While still in her teens she had developed a trick of fixing her eyes on a person and staring them into consternation. Most of the time, however, she had to wear shades because even somebody who had never heard of Kat Taylor would be likely to remember those eyes. When Kat was a child, there had been a cleaning lady who worked in the lab who refused to go anywhere near Kat or her room, convinced that the six-year-old was a demon.
Kat sat on the floor, emptying everything out of her bag and turning it inside out. There was a tiny sewing kit in with her stuff; she took the scissors from it and carefully cut a pair of threads in the lining of her bag, then took hold of the tail and pulled. The seaming all along the bottom of the bag unraveled, and Kat pulled out the lining completely.
The bag had a false bottom, with a flexible aluminum sheet on either outside face, one at the real bottom of the bag, and one facing up from the bottom of the inside when the false lining was in place. The backsides of the aluminum were coated with layers of foam rubber that faced each other and cushioned whatever was in the secret panel. The aluminum made the contents impervious to X-rays. The whole false bottom was encased in a vinyl slipcover that matched the rest of the bag's lining and could be sewn into place.
Inside the false bottom was Kat's dearest possession, in pieces. She took out a pair of black gloves with padding over the backs, a coil of fine nylon filament like fishing line, and a packet of eight thin metal blades wrapped in an oily cloth. Packed in with the sewing kit was a small hardware set, ostensibly for the camera. Kat set the blades one at a time into the slits in the padding on the backs of the gloves, sliding each one down firmly with the pliers until she felt it click. Then she took a tiny screwdriver and screwed down the lock on each one, through holes in the wrist of the glove. Next she took the filament and, using a piece of wire, strung it through the latch mechanism, feeding it patiently through its tubing until it came out the other end and she secured it to the trigger, knotting it several times before screwing down the catch. The catch could be tightened if necessary, in case the filament stretched or Kat's hands were stiff. There was also a trigger-release on the back of her wrists, as a backup. But she preferred to use the hair trigger. She put on the right glove and then the left one, and clenched her fists. The right glove worked immediately; there was a soft twang as the blades sprang forward, extending six inches beyond her knuckles, razor-sharp and not much wider than a pencil. She tightened the catch on her left hand and tried it again. It worked.
Kat had worked out the original design-with a little help-when she was eighteen. Over the years she had elaborated, added the hair-trigger, for one thing, and streamlined the whole thing until it was barely noticeable of the backs of her hands, even if one was looking. The backs of the gloves, including the fingers, were lined with cut-proof protective fibers. The front wrists of the gloves were soft and gusseted, so she could bend her wrists forward without impedance, but the backs were hard-lined to give her wrist extra strength and prevent it being bent backwards, and to keep the blade housing in a straight line. Kat pulled on the drawstrings at the back of each wrist and retracted the blades, locking them back, nocked for when she needed them. Satisfied, she took off the right glove and put it in her jacket pocket, leaving the left one on.
She took her sunglasses, camera and jacket, putting her passport and her credit cards into the zippered inner pocket. There was nothing else in the bag that she couldn't live without, so she left it in the middle of the bed. She wasn't too surprised to find Jano standing outside her door when she opened it.
"Where are you going?" he asked.
"Shopping," she said. "I suppose you're going to follow me?"
"Not this time," he said, without a trace of inflection in his voice or face. "I'm supposed to give you this." He held out a plastic card with a magnetic strip on the back. "That's a passcard to the security system, so you can get in and out. Come with me and I'll show you what door to use."
Well, now. That was more than she had expected. Kat wondered at Reece's motives, but she didn't question them. He had shown her a remarkable amount of laissez-faire courtesy and she planned to be a gracious-and cautious-guest by not taking unnecessary advantage of it.