Chapter 10
Day Two
(age twenty-four)
There was always a hangover after a meltdown, part physical exhaustion and part shame.
Kelli felt more ashamed than usual as she slunk into the study.
She was an awful gremlin and a vicious screamer, and she hadn’t even accomplished anything by it.
Orlando wouldn’t have screamed at anybody like that; he’d have plotted his escape in the back of his mind, but he’d have kept his cool.
But in spite of all the yelling, Kelli did have the beginnings of a plan. This was the part of the story where all seemed lost for Orlando—but, little did the villains know, his loyal crew were already on their way. It was just a question of surviving long enough until then.
“Hey,” said Ting, soft and hesitant, as she reached the doorway. Zhaleh had gotten as far from the study as possible, but Ting lingered near the door. “Kelli, I’m sorry. I . . . didn’t know.”
Kelli stared at them. “Didn’t know what?”
“About the blackmail. I didn’t know they were going to force you.
I know it probably doesn’t make a lot of difference now, but I wouldn’t have signed on for this job if I’d known.
Like, sure, I steal stuff, I don’t get a lot of moral high ground, but I do that with a team of people who signed up for it and who are all on the same page.
Forcing people like this is for when it’s a job that really matters—for the survival of the group, not for a kid’s fucking birthday present. This isn’t right.”
Kelli wiped her nose. She wondered if Rowan and Zhaleh had told Ting about the fire already.
She wondered if, in Ting’s mind, setting a fire was okay, as long as the arsonists had all consented to being on the arson team.
What about the people who hadn’t consented to a fire endangering their lives?
What about the people on Ganymede who hadn’t consented to criminals breaking into their data center?
“Then why did you stay on the team?” Kelli asked. “Why didn’t you tell Conchita to go jump in the lava? Unless she’s blackmailing you, too?”
“Kelli, how do you think a syndicate stays together in the first place? She’s got leverage on everybody here.”
Kelli frowned more deeply, because at first glance, that didn’t make sense. It couldn’t be everybody, because that would mean nobody wanted to be there. And besides, if Ting was being blackmailed, they ought to be more upset.
“Anyway, don’t forget your anti-nauseants,” said Ting, who happened to be right next to one of the bags that had them. They dug them out, along with a baggie of water, and offered them.
Kelli recognized the meager gesture as a peace offering.
It didn’t feel right, acting peaceful with these people when they didn’t deserve it; but the screaming hadn’t felt right either.
She took the pills, and the excuse to retreat into solitude for a minute or two; she zipped herself up tightly in the heavy darkness of the study’s sleeping bag.
When Orlando was in a bind, he thought through his options.
He thought on his feet very fast, and Kelli was slower, but she could reason it out, given time.
What were her options? She could deflate like a balloon and gutlessly do everything Conchita and Rosaura wanted; but that was no good.
She could kick and scream, run away, smash all the equipment on the Wildfire, stab everyone, blow the whole thing up; but then she would be dead, and without a way home, and anyway it would be one of her against all these dozens of people with guns.
Consequently—she had come to this conclusion already, at just about the time they reached the hangar—she had to find something in the middle.
She should look like she was obeying, bide her time, and subvert the whole thing from the inside.
Orlando had done that plenty of times, albeit with a better poker face and more panache; but Kelli didn’t actually need a poker face.
Kelli looked from the outside like a miserable prisoner, who yelled and screamed and cried because she didn’t see an actual way out.
Her actual way out would be secret. Play her cards right, and people wouldn’t even look for them under the yelling.
And Kelli did have two cards. She had her secret line to Baz, the pink crescent that nobody had discovered yet.
She had her expertise as a professional script supervisor, which nobody else in the Brimstone Syndicate apparently had.
Therefore, she could use both of these things together.
She could observe very carefully and find small spots for sabotage where no one who didn’t have a script supervisor’s expertise would see them.
And in the meantime she could narrate the whole thing to Baz.
She could warn him that the heist team was coming.
She could tell him exactly where they would go and what they planned to do.
Baz would know who to pass that on to. She could do the whole thing, if she was careful, without the Quixadas ever finding out that she hadn’t played by the terms of the blackmail.
And then she and Baz could catch the Brimstone Syndicate between their pincers.
It might not be pretty. She might not get out of it with her career intact. But Kelli could still bring Conchita Quixada’s whole operation down.
The ship hadn’t launched yet; which meant that for a few precious minutes, if Kelli composed a message quickly, she’d still be on a moon with a proper network which would send her messages out at the speed of light.
She’d have to connect the pink crescent to one of Rowan’s workstations before the Wildfire took off, at a moment when no one was looking, so that it could send its message through the network—and then the message would take a while, presumably, to get through the queue and into one of Io’s periodic tight-beam transmissions to Callisto.
But she could do it. It’d get there, if she hurried.
In the heavy darkness of the sleeping bag, Kelli fixed the pink crescent to her watch, and she started to write.