The asteroid had instead become a centre of commerce and shipbuilding, mostly unmanned ore-freighters. In the pre-Shoal days, the asteroid had floated naked to the vacuum, its surface riddled with slag and excavation mounds left over from the construction of internalized living quarters. Or so Dakota was informed by the moodily grey and black images hanging on the walls of the tube leading from Mesa Verde’s docking ports as the spoken testimonials of long-gone prisoners whispered out from hidden circuitry in the picture frames.
The asteroid’s surface was visible all around through panoramic windows. Palms waved in an artificially induced breeze stirring up the air that wrapped around Mesa Verde’s mottled surface like a blanket. Multiple tiny suns shone down through the containment fields, their light and warmth falling on tended gardens and open plazas.
Dakota focused on keeping calm. There were hidden security devices everywhere, scanning her inside and out every step of the way. Lenses the size of dust-motes, and recording devices invisible to the naked eye, moved around her in a cloud, even probing beneath her skin to verify her ID.
Her new ID, she remembered. She wasn’t Dakota Merrick any more, and wouldn’t be for a long while. Her Ghost worked overtime balancing out her internal neuro-pharmacology, suppressing any detectable signs of anxiety-anything that might lead Mesa Verde’s security to suspect she might, say, be carrying a mini nuke in her gullet, or a timed virus woven into her DNA.
Dakota’s Ghost also worked overtime in order to disguise its own existence. She could sense it hovering in her mental background, calculating risks and strategies nanosecond by nanosecond.
All of this was good, but it was nice to have a little extra too: like someone on the inside of Mesa Verde’s administrative body helping her out, invisibly altering records and allowing her to pass through security procedures without unnecessary altercation.
Dakota was making good on old contacts.
What neither she nor her Ghost had predicted, though, was the presence of real, live, human customs officers. That was entirely unexpected.
On encountering them, Dakota hesitated only for a moment, before pushing on with a determined stride. The two men wore the uniforms of the Consortium military detachment permanently stationed on Mesa Verde, and each had a force stick holstered on his hip. They were talking with a pair of priests who had obviously also just disembarked.
As Dakota approached the gathered figures she heard the artificial tones of the priests’ voices, and noticed the bright lights of the corridor gleaming off their metallic skins. They moved on after a moment, having obviously satisfied the guards of the nature of their visit. The long dark vestments swished on the floor of the walkway as they headed towards the atrium beyond.
Dakota produced her credentials and handed them over. ‘Mala Oorthaus,’ one of them muttered, studying them. ‘What’s your business here?’
‘Real live humans?’ Dakota said in mock surprise, giving them each a grin. ‘What’s wrong with an ordinary scan-and-sweep?’
‘You’ll have heard about what happened at the Rock.’ The guard didn’t smile back as he replied. ‘What’re you here for?’
‘Independent shipping contractor.’ She held his gaze for a moment. ‘Just hoping to drum up some business here.’
She had used the cosmetic software in Piri’s surgical unit to puff out her cheeks a little. Her lips looked correspondingly thinner than usual, and her hair was shorter and darker than it had been. Her skin, too, was darker, and a couple of days in the medbox had swelled her hips, building up and slightly altering her skeletal structure while she lay in dreamless sleep. Her face itself was smaller, rounder, her eyes wider with a hint of epicanthic fold.
The guard glanced to one side, studying a report Dakota couldn’t see clearly from where she stood, but she caught a glimpse of an image of the inside of her skull displayed in real-time, as hidden devices analysed the interior of her body.
She tried not to moan with relief when she saw that her implants weren’t showing up.
After a moment he waved her on. Several steps on, and she remembered to start breathing again.
She found Josef Marados in a tall building whose uppermost floors pushed out through the thin envelope of atmosphere surrounding Mesa Verde. Judging by the size of his office, she figured he’d done well for himself in the years since Redstone.
‘God damn, even with the alterations, you’re still a sight for sore eyes,’ he began, coming over to her with a grin. There was a hint here of the effusive manner Dakota remembered from years ago, but this was otherwise an altogether much more sombre individual than the man she’d known.
‘How long, Dakota? How long has it been?’
‘Not so long,’ she replied, pulling him into a brief, tentative hug. He’d lost weight over the years, perhaps too much given his large frame. ‘It’s only been a few years since-’
‘Yeah, since.’ He nodded into her sudden silence. ‘Feels like a lifetime though, don’t it?’
Dakota nodded in return. It did.
The few illegal machine-heads still in existence in the home system had their own methods of staying in touch. Moreover, Ghost implants were designed to be mutually detectable-two machine-heads could sense each other’s presence once they were within several kilometres’ range of each other. So if Josef had still possessed his implants, she’d have sensed him at a considerable distance beforehand.
At first, Dakota thought Josef merely worked for Black Rock Ore. Instead, it turned out that he owned it.
Black Rock Ore had once specialized in the exploitation of carbonaceous asteroids. Nowadays, under Josef’s administration, they skipped doing the dirty work themselves by financing other small, independent contractors to mine the asteroid belt for its precious metals, and then raked in a very profitable percentage.
Now here she was, sitting on one of a pair of couches, facing the man who had been her sometime lover in those few, brief years before her previous life had ended.
He studied her and smiled. ‘So, Bourdain’s Rock. Care to tell me what happened back there?’
Dakota felt her jaw tighten.
‘Room’s clean,’ Josef assured her. ‘No bugs. Glass is one-way and tuned to randomize vibrations, so we can see out, but no one on the outside will be able to see or hear anything. The Aligned Worlds Federal Treaty gets a bit vague on business practices, so industrial espionage is just part of the landscape around here. But all that really means,’ he said, a grin spreading across his face, ‘is you need to make sure your counter-espionage is more effective than their snooping.’