Nine
NINE
Southern Continent Gas Production. SoCon GasPro.
Isako arrives by tram well after sundown, but the richest division in the Company blazes with heat and light.
Streetlamps glow nonstop over the wide boulevards.
Private cars streak past the streams of wagefolk being disgorged onto the sidewalk by commuter buses, wearily returning home after three-week-long shifts in the gas fields beyond the airshield.
She starts to sweat from the heat. No one here seems to be wearing thermals, not even gloves and hats.
It’s barely spring, but pedestrians bustle along briskly in thin layers as if it’s the peak of summer.
The wagefolk here look better fed, better dressed, better in every way.
They don’t think about water and oxygen budgets. They probably eat meat every week.
That’s what you get when you work for SoCon GasPro.
GasPro is the heart of the Company. It’s the engine of growth, and growth is survival on Aquilo.
Without GasPro, there would be no reason for Tenacity Cityhab to exist. Without GasPro, the Company might as well shut off the airshield and let the Vastness condemn civilization on this rock to a quick oblivion.
Because GasPro is what will eventually turn Aquilo into a livable world. Everyone knows it.
The wagefolk of GasPro are above other wagefolk, and the directors of GasPro are above other directors.
Among all the GasPro divisions, the factory fields of the Southern Continent—chosen by the Founding Officers as the site of the Landing and where Tenacity still stands—are the oldest, largest, and most productive.
That makes Director Sandbar Uchi a king among kings.
Isako checks into a hotel. There are plenty to choose from, so she chooses a spacious two-room suite on the second floor of the Summer Suites because it’s close to division headquarters and transit, offers room service twenty-six hours a day, and has a balcony she can use to escape if necessary.
Her scripline still works; she’s been assured by Minto’s people that it’ll keep working so long as she’s on contract with SatOps.
After she unpacks the suitcase of clothes and necessities she brought over from her apartment in Astrocom, she pays for a cheap meal followed by an expensive shower.
She takes her time in the shower, washing out her long hair, ignoring the first price-escalation chime and only turning off the water when she hears the second.
The bathroom’s filled with steam when she steps out.
It seems just about every longkniveswoman past a certain age cuts her hair short.
You get to the point where you realize the extra water expense isn’t worth it, and you’re usually tying it back anyway so it’s not a bother should you end up needing to move quickly to defend a client or your own skin.
Isako won’t do it. Maybe it’s vain, but she doesn’t care; she’s going to die with long hair.
It’s impractical, it costs her time and money, but everyone’s got to have personal principles.
Her hair is the only thing defying the pace of aging that afflicts the rest of her.
It’s still thick and glossy, a black so pure that Tai used to say it was nearly blue.
Tai loved her hair. He used to run his hands through it, bury his face in it, stroke it after they made love.
She wouldn’t be Quickblade without it. She’d just be a regular old contractor with short hair. Fuck that.
Reluctantly, she wonders how Tai is doing.
How he’s liking his white badge, with its stability and benefits.
It was always his goal, a common one among midtracs—spend your twenties earning high fees on contract work and seeing different parts of the Company, then settle down, maybe have children, and work long enough for the same client that they buy out your contract from the Agency and hire you permanently as a regular wageman.
It was a future they’d once envisioned sharing: A comfortable twilight to their careers, with more time for each other and for Maya.
Putting away their longknives, trading black badges for white ones, clocking in and out of work at regular times before enjoying a decade of cushy, Company-sponsored retirement.
Resigning together at the end, leaving Maya wanting for nothing.
That was before the Transit Rebellion earned her the name Quickblade, before she turned down being a Partner to take on an Exclusive contract with high-flying Forest Greves, before the all-consuming Astrocom-SatOps war—all of which entrenched her further in the edge life, until the steadily growing distance between her and Tai was too large and tiresome to reach across.
Some marriages end in dramatic emotional throes of betrayal, bitter disappointment, and rage; hers ended the way a television series ends when it’s gone on for too long—with inattention.
When they finally decided to call it quits, it took three weeks to find time in their schedules to meet in person to make it official.
Isako doesn’t harbor ill feelings toward Tai.
She still cares about him, nostalgically, and misses the reliable sex, infrequent as it became.
But the dissolution of their marriage hasn’t made much difference in her daily life, which is sad proof that by the end, it wasn’t much of a marriage anymore.
She ought to get in touch with him, let him know what’s going on, at least give him a heads-up on her decision. But that would take time and emotional effort when she’s tired and still has a lot to do.
After she’s done combing and drying her hair, she puts icy gel on her sore elbow and does the usual routine of physio exercises for her knees. Then she sets up a secure data line and calls her most trusted, reliable research subcontractor.
“I thought you’d be dead by now,” says Crater when he picks up. “Aren’t you a ronin?”
“Not yet,” Isako informs him. “Long story. I got another assignment and can’t resign until it’s done.”
Crater makes a sympathetic noise. A subcon’s life is even less secure than that of an ordinary contractor, but Crater will be fine so long as other black badges keep hiring him.
And they do, even at his exorbitant rates, because he’s the best at what he does.
The vast Companynet is like an onion—a few outer layers are available to everyone, many levels are accessible only to those with specific divisional role-related clearance, and finally a deep, dense center—the remnants of the old shipmind of Tenacity —is known only to the Executive and the most senior members of the Board of Directors.
Crater is a worm that wriggles through more of the onion than any one person should be able to.
Isako wonders how close the hacker could get to the Executive’s own secret files, but that’s not something Crater would ever speak of; he values his survival too much.
Anything else, though, he’ll provide for the right price.
You could ask Crater to find out where a man was last Freeday evening and he would dig up and compile a minute-by-minute schedule of his whereabouts as well as a video of him fucking his mistress.
Crater’s choosy; he only takes select atiers as clients. Isako’s hired him several times over the years. She’s never met him in person. Which is for the best, since the information he provides makes people want to kill him.
Isako says, “I need everything you can find on Director Uchi.”
A moment of silence from the other end of the line. “Director Sandbar Uchi? SoCon GasPro?” Crater laughs nervously. “What kind of assignment have you gotten yourself into?”
“Can you get it or not? Family background, work history, press coverage, and medical records especially. The more recent, the better. He entered second stage not long ago, so there has to be plenty of stuff, pre- and post-recorporalization.”
“That won’t be easy to get to. GasPro safeguards are tight. Could take me weeks.”
“I have four.”
“This is about Uchi’s nomination to the Board, isn’t it?
” When Isako doesn’t answer, Crater says, “I’m sure you know what you’re doing, but this shit’s on another level.
We’re talking BoD-, Sweetsea-, Executive-involvement shit.
Tracs who get caught up in this sort of thing don’t generally have a good record of survival, you know? ”
Crater isn’t normally the sort to be concerned for her welfare. Isako’s a little touched.
“Call me when you have something,” she says, and hangs up.
She oils and polishes her longknife and triggersheath, checking and double-checking until she’s satisfied they’re in pristine working order.
The Suzimachi L10 has the smoothest, fastest ejection system of any model but requires constant maintenance.
Along with a cup of mint tea, it’s how she winds down every night before bed.
Tonight, it doesn’t help much. She would like to sleep off the ordeal at Agency headquarters for twelve straight hours, but the clock is ticking on her getting to Martim before he’s wise to her arrival.
The hotel’s unfamiliar bed and menopausal insomnia allow six and a half unsatisfying hours of patchy shut-eye before she’s up.
After a light breakfast and a strong cup of black tea, she’s at the entrance of the East Swan Peter Towers apartment building as the sun begins to spill its tepid light across the tundra.
Of all the apprentices Isako’s trained over the years, Dragonfly Martim was the worst—and the best. His longknife skills were shit.
Less shit after she was done with him, enough to get him licensed, but his combat aptitude wouldn’t hold a candle to any of her other students.
He compensated for it, though, with a razor-sharp mind, an obscene capacity for hard work, and a burning determination to rise above his humble deckhand origins.