22. Everyone Looks #4
Charlie sets her tea down.
“They are not done.”
Flossie’s pen stops.
“Define not done, lovey.”
“I had a tail at the Velar Three relay station five days ago. Human. Male, civilian kit, professional. He cleared the platform when I clocked him. I picked up a second tail at the Junction Two transfer on the way here, and I have spent the four days since I docked telling myself I lost him at the ring.”
“And do you believe yourself, lovey?”
“No. I do not trust that I lost him.”
“Have you been to your quarters?”
“My quarters are at Velar Three.”
“And you cannot go back to them?”
“Not yet. Not without a bodyguard or something within three meters of mine for the duration. And I do not have a bodyguard.”
She lets the sentence sit.
She does not look at Thane.
She is not asking for a bodyguard.
Junction One Customs refused. Unaffiliated space, not their problem. SRS quoted her a fee she could not afford. Junction One Security has no jurisdiction outside the docking ring.
SNAG was the last name on her list.
She finishes. Picks up her tea.
Her eyes finally go to Thane.
She’s holding off on the second look. She has briefed the room and now the briefing is over and the female who walked into this office expecting Petra to walk her back out is sitting in a chair across from a six-eight Korrhai whose teacup has not, since she walked in, moved.
She looks at him directly.
“Hi,” she says.
“Charlie.” Thane’s voice. “Thane.”
“Hi, Thane.”
“I know the methodology.”
A pause.
“You — what?”
“The intercept. Three operators. Cargo-bay grab. Professional knowledge of the route, the cargo, and the female. I have been tracking the same operators for six months. Different cargo. Same hands.”
She sets her tea down.
“You are kidding me?”
“I am not, Charlie, a male who jokes.”
“That is a very unconvincing claim coming from a male holding a teacup like that.”
The room goes still.
Thane looks at the cup.
He looks at Charlie.
His mouth moves. It is not a smile, but the plate below his jaw moves a quarter-inch. The teal-blue along his cheekbone deepens by the smallest measure.
He says, in the deadpan that is his entire vocal register:
“It is a small cup, Charlie.”
The snort comes out before she can absorb it.
Loud this time. Surprised. Her hand goes to her mouth half a second too late, and her shoulders shake once, and her ears go pink at the tops.
“Sorry,” she says, into her hand. “Sorry, I — sorry.”
“Don’t apologize, Charlie.”
“I — yeah, that’s not — give me a second.”
JINX, private channel: “Logged.”
Charlie’s hand comes off her mouth. She picks her tea up. Her ears are still pink.
“So,” she says to the desk. “The methodology.”
“The methodology. We will find your dataset. We will find the operators. We will find what they were taking your data to.”
“You think there’s a place?”
“I am certain there is.”
“All right,” she says, quieter.
She takes the notebook out of her side pocket. Sets it on Flossie’s desk. Slides it across.
“Everything I have. The originals are in here. I made the backup by hand because the dataset digital and now it’s gone, and I am not repeating the mistake.”
Thane reaches across.
His hand stops one inch above the cover.
“May I?”
“Please.”
He picks it up.
His palm against the brown cover is the size of the cover. The plates across his knuckles catch the light. He opens it and reads.
Charlie watches him read.
Petra is holding her breath.
Flossie’s pen is on the desk.
I am drinking the most interesting cup of coffee I have ever held while not drinking it.
Thane closes the notebook. Sets it on the desk between them. Carefully.
“Charlie.”
“Yes.”
“This is excellent work.”
The corner of her mouth moves. “Thank you.”
“I am going to need to read it again.”
“All right.”
“At length.”
“All right.”
A pause.
“This evening, possibly.”
The smile starts at the corner of her mouth and arrives for half a second, at the center.
“All right, Thane.”
Flossie writes in her notebook. Charlie watches Flossie write. Charlie’s own pen is, by some habit, in her hand, and Charlie’s notebook is open in her lap.
“Flossie.”
“Yes, lovey.”
“You write everything down?”
“Always.”
“Why?”
“Because the system doesn’t, lovey. And someone should.”
Charlie’s pen moves once across her own page. She closes the notebook.
The two women look at each other.
“Right, lovey. Let me tell you what we are going to do.”
Thane leads by operational continuity. Charlie embedded, working the trail with him from the safe house, by the Velar Three tail and the Junction Two transfer.
SPROUT and brICK on handoff. Me consulting only, because I have a Ferran salt merchant and a bonded mate with a Junction One operational priority and no availability for an unaffiliated space until the Ferran clears.
Charlie nods through all of it.
Charlie’s eyes go to Thane’s hands twice and do not, on any visible register, register that she has done it.
The teacup, in his hand, is still.
Flossie wraps. Charlie is staying tonight at the small SNAG safe house two corridors over. She does not know Junction One.
Thane is staying with her.
Flossie said: Thane, the safehouse perimeter requires a Korrhai-grade body inside it for the duration. The Velar tail is a known unknown. I would be more comfortable with you inside the safe house door rather than in your own quarters at level five.
Thane said: Copy, Florence.
Charlie gave no sign of having heard the conversation she had not been part of and whose subject was the arrangement of her sleeping quarters for the next number of nights.
She set her tea down at the moment Flossie said Korrhai-grade body and her hand has not picked the tea back up.
He stands. Sets the notebook back on the desk in front of her. Drinks the rest of his lukewarm tea and waits at the door.
Charlie picks up her notebook. Slides it into her pocket. Crosses the office.
She stops at his elbow. He, beside her, shortens his pace by one half-step before she has cleared the office and reached the corridor.
The door cycles. They go.
The door closes.
The office holds its breath for three seconds.
“BETTING POOL OPEN,” Petra announces.
“Logged,“ SPROUT says. “Opening odds: forty-eight hours to first kiss, six days to first acknowledged courtship behavior.”
Petra takes three weeks. Xor takes eleven days. Flossie writes a number in the brown notebook without looking up, and the number, when Petra drags it out of her, is six days, and Petra says her name at a volume Flossie’s own inside-voice policy does not permit.
I clear my throat.
The room looks at me.
“Four days.”
A pause.
“Vosk. You’re betting under Flossie.”
“I am.”
“Why.”
“The blue fingers, Petra. The notebook in the side pocket. The reach across the desk that stopped one inch above the cover. The teacup at four o’clock for the entire briefing. The pace at the door cut short by half a step before she had cleared the office.”
The room is, in the seconds I have spent listening, quiet.
“Four days, Flossie.”
Flossie writes my name next to her number. Below hers. Four.
She does not, on any external register, smile. The corner of her mouth twitches.
“All right, lovey.”
I leave the report on the desk. I will finish it tomorrow.
At the door, I stop.
“Flossie.”
“Yes, lovey.”
“Thane’s hands.”
A pause. Flossie’s pen does not move.
“I clocked it, Tael.”
“All right.”
“It is not, lovey, our business.”
“It is not.”
“Yet.”
“Yet.”
“Go and collect your female, Tael. My table. 1830. Do not be late on my account.”
“Going.”
Petra, from her desk, without looking up:
“Tell Natalie we said hi.”
“Petra.”
“And bring her in this week. Maurice has decided he likes her.”
“Maurice is a toy.”
“Maurice has decided. The matter is closed.”
I do not respond. I do not react. I leave.