“It’s all about how it looks,” Fred said. “This is the OPA’s navy. The Behemothis the Belt’s answer to Mars’ and Earth’s heaviest hitters. Having an Earther on the bridge doesn’t send the right message.”
“All right,” Bull said.
“I’m in the same position. You know that. Even after all this time, I have to work twice as hard to command loyalty and respect because of where I’m from. Even the ones who like having me around because they think I make Earth look weak don’t want to take orders from me. I’ve had to earn and re-earn every scrap of respect.”
“Okay,” Bull said. Security officer was going to mean less time in uniform. With a sigh, he put both suits on the chair.
“I’m not saying that you haven’t,” Fred said. “No one knows better than I do that you’re the best of the best. There are just some constraints we have to live with. To get the job done.”
Bull leaned against the wall, his arms crossed. Fred looked up at him from under frost-colored brows.
“Sir, I been flying with you for a long time,” Bull said. “If you need to ask me something, you can just do it.”
“I need you to make this work,” Fred said. “What’s going on out there is the most important thing in the system, and we don’t know what it is. If we embarrass ourselves or give the inner planets some critical advantage, we stand to lose a lot of ground. Ashford and Pa are good people, but they’re Belters. They don’t have the same experience working with Earth forces that you and I do.”
“You think they’re going to start something?”
“No. Ashford will try his hardest to do the right thing, but he’ll react like a Belter and be surprised when other people don’t.”
“Ashford has only everdone a right thing because he’s afraid of being embarrassed. He’s a pretty uniform surrounding vacuum. And you can’t rely on that.”
“I’m not,” Fred agreed. “I’m sending you out there because I trust you to make it work.”
“But you’re not giving me command.”
“But I’m not giving you command.”
“How about a raise?”
“Not that either,” Fred said.
“Well, heck,” Bull said. “All the responsibility and none of the power? How can I turn down an offer like that?”
“No joking. We’re screwing you over, and the reasons are all optics and political bullshit. But I need you to take it.”
“So I’ll take it,” Bull said.
For a moment, the only sound was the quiet ticking of the air recycler. Bull turned back to the task of putting his life in a footlocker again. Somewhere far above him, hidden by tons of steel and ceramic, raw stone and vacuum, Behemothwaited.
Chapter Three: Melba
When she walked into the gambling house, Melba felt eyes on her. The room was lit by the displays on the game decks, pink and blue and gold. Most of them were themed around sex or violence, or both. Press a button, spend your money, and watch the girls put foreign and offensive objects inside themselves while you waited to see whether you’d won. Slot machines, poker, real-time lotteries. The men who played them exuded an atmosphere of stupidity, desperation, and an almost tangible hatred of women.
“Darling,” an immensely fat man said from behind the counter. “Don’t know where you think you come to, but you come in the wrong place. Maybe best you walk back out.”
“I have an appointment,” she said. “Travin.”
The fat man’s eyes widened under their thick lids. Someone in the gloom called out a vulgarity meant to unease her. It did, but she didn’t let it show.
“Travin in the back, you want him, darling,” the fat man said, nodding. At the far end of the room, through the gauntlet of leers and threat, a red metal door.
All of her instincts came from before, when she was Clarissa, and so they were all wrong now. From the time she’d been old enough to walk, she’d been trained in self-defense, but it had all been anti-kidnapping. How to attract the attention of the authorities, how to deescalate situations with her captors. There had been other work, of course. Physical training had been part of it, but the goal had always been to break away. To run. To find help.
Now that there was no one to help her, nothing quite applied. But it was what she had, so it was what she used. Melba—not Clarissa, Melba—nodded to the fat man and walked through the close-packed, dim room. The full gravity of Earth pulled on her like an illness. On one of the gambling decks, a cartoon woman was being sexually assaulted by three small gray aliens while a flying saucer floated above them. Someone had won a minor jackpot. Melba looked away. Behind her, an unseen man laughed, and she felt the skin at the back of her neck tighten.
Of all her siblings, she had most enjoyed the physical training. When it ended, she began studying tai chi with the self-defense instructor. Then, when she was fourteen, her father had made a joke about it at a family gathering. How learning to fight might make sense—he could respect that—but dancing while pretending to fight looked stupid and wasted time. She’d never trained again. That was ten years ago.
She opened the red door and walked through it. The office seemed almost bright. A small desk with a built-in display tuned to a cheap accounting system. White frosted glass that let in the sunlight but hid the streets of Baltimore. A formed plastic couch upholstered with the corporate logo of a cheap brand of beer that even people on basic could afford. Two hulking men sat on the couch. One had implanted sunglasses that made him look like an insect. The other wore a T-shirt that strained at his steroidal shoulders. She’d seen them before.
Travin was at the desk, leaning his thigh against it. His hair was cut close to the scalp, a dusting of white at the temples. His beard was hardly longer. He wore what passed for a good suit in his circles. Father wouldn’t have worn it as a costume.
“Ah, look, the inimitable Melba.”
“You knew I was here,” she said. There were no chairs. No place to sit that wasn’t already occupied. She stood.
“’Course I did,” Travin said. “Soon as you came off the street.”
“Are we doing business?” she asked. Her voice cut the air. Travin grinned. His teeth were uncorrected and gray at the gums. It was an affectation of wealth, a statement that he was so powerful mere cosmesis was beneath him. She felt a hot rush of scorn. He was like an old cargo cultist; imitating the empty displays of power and no idea what they really meant. She was reduced to dealing with him, but at least she had the grace to be embarrassed by it.
“It’s all done, miss,” Travin said. “Melba Alzbeta Koh. Born on Luna to Alscie, Becca, and Sergio Koh, all deceased. No siblings. No taxation indenture. Licensed electrochemical technician. Your new self awaits, ah?”
“And the contract?”
“The Cerisierships out, civilian support for the grand mission to the Ring. Our Miss Koh, she’s on it. Senior class, even. Little staff to oversee, don’t have to get your hands dirty.”
Travin pulled a white plastic envelope from his pocket. The shadow of a cheap hand terminal showed through the tissue.
“All here, all ready,” he said. “You take it and walk through the door a new woman, ah?”
Melba took her own hand terminal out of her pocket. It was smaller than the one in Travin’s hand, and better made. She’d miss it. She thumbed in her code, authorized the transfer, and slid it back in her pocket.
“All right,” she said. “The money’s yours. I’ll take delivery.”
“Ah, there is still oneproblem,” Travin said.
“We have an agreement,” Melba said. “I did my part.”
“And it speaks well of you,” Travin said. “But doing business with you? I enjoy it, I think. Exciting discoveries to be made. Creating this new you, we have to put the DNA in the tables. We have to scrub out doubled records. I think you haven’t been entirely honest with me.”