────────────────────────────────────────────────── LOCATION On board the Second Hand DATE 04.08.836 ARCHIVE personal log · title: 'The Fourth Gregory' · access: restricted ──────────────────────────────────────────────────
Nine hundred gigabytes of someone else's secrets were moving through her uplink, and Lisa was thinking about a drink.
The Second Hand was docked at Lanzarote Station because Lanzarote had bandwidth, and the bandwidth was the only reason Lisa ever came here. The files had to reach the drop before she got paid. Everything else was waiting.
"Ninety-five percent uploaded," JADE's voice echoed across the room. The mess hall of the Second Hand had long since stopped being a mess hall - six workstations now, racks of servers in the cabinets where plates used to go.
Her eyes flicked down to the screen just in time to watch the progress meter click over to 96%. She fought the urge to fidget. The job was almost done, which meant the part Lisa hated was about to begin.
The job was standard for what her work had become. Corporate espionage, the kind where she walked away paid and everyone else involved walked into a bad quarter - reprisals, firings, someone's career quietly ended over a file they never should have lost. The corps never learned. That was the only reason she still had work.
She keyed in the call. The routing ran through six layers of anonymizing relays before it left her ship, and the audio latency was still under a second. She'd built the routing herself, years ago. It still held.
"Murakami," a gruff voice behind a modulator finally answered. Her lip twisted. She'd forgotten he'd given himself a Kusari codename.
"It's Jaeger. I have something for you."
"So it's done?"
"Wouldn't be calling you otherwise. Transmitting the link."
A long pause as he accessed it. "Why can't I download the files?"
Here we go.
"It's read-only until I receive my payment. Top of the folder, my invoice. Open it."
Another, shorter pause. "This is not what we agreed on."
"Time and materials contract, as agreed. Time came in as planned, despite a detour to Omega-3. Materials ran over. The drone class I needed wasn't cheap." She didn't bother with inflection. This was the fourth Gregory she'd dealt with this year. She could recite his lines for him.
He sputtered. "You... you've got to be fucking with me. 575k for a drone? Are you out of your goddamn mind?"
"I told you when you signed that I didn't know the materials cost yet. And you said - your words - 'money is no object.'"
"I didn't... didn't mean spending... fuck! How am I going to get this through Payables? This is way too big of an..." he trailed off. She didn't like when they did that; it meant they were plotting some kind of incredibly stup-
"I'm not paying that," he was trying to sound determined.
"Credits are already spent, which makes it part of what you owe me."
"Fuck you. You're lucky I give you a dime over this... this..." He paused again.
"One minute." She said it quietly. "Wire my creds or these files are gone. Decide."
"You can't... I'll... I'll report you! I know who you are, Lisa Jaeger. That's your real name, isn't it? I... I have proof of you committing a crime against Bretonia. So release the files or I'll turn it all over."
"Akiko."
A long pause on the other end. "How do you know that name?"
"The oiran you see in New Tokyo. Photos, video. Your wife would probably want to see them. So would her friends."
"You... you bitch."
"Shut your mouth, Gregory. It can get worse."
Silence. A small mercy.
"You wire me one million, eight hundred and forty-seven thousand credits. I unlock the files. We don't speak again."
"Fine. Credits sent."
She watched the credits hit her account, then keyed in the command to release the files. Killed the connection.
Stared at the black screen. The emptiness felt sharp in her belly in a way that wasn't related to not having eaten recently.
Eventually she stood up. Pulled on her jacket. Checked her pockets without thinking about it.
"I'm going across, JADE. Airtight mode."
"Affirmative, Lisa," JADE answered.
She went across.
────────────────────────────────────────────────── end of record · jaeger@second-hand:~$
────────────────────────────────────────────────── LOCATION Lanzarote Station DATE 04.08.836 ARCHIVE personal log · title: 'Silhouettes' · access: restricted ──────────────────────────────────────────────────
Lanzarote Station smelled the same as it had the last time, which was the nicest thing Lisa could say about it.
She cut through the halls, shoulders tight, eyes down. Being on the station hadn't touched her headache at all, but at least a drink was on the horizon.
She walked right past the hallway to the front door of a bar. Walked in, took stock of the room before she committed. Couple old spacers at the bar and one bored-looking bartender. It'd do.
Ordered a drink. Gin, top shelf. Picked a bottle at random. Found a spot in the corner, back to the wall - old habit.
The drink burned a hot line of fire down her throat. Perfection. She felt her stomach slowly start to unknot, her shoulders slowly start to relax. She fidgeted for her jacket pocket's packet of smokes.
The click of the lighter, the drag of hot smoke. Then another line of fire. Her shoulders released another tic.
A flicker of movement across the room pulled her eye up. She went still. A face she recognized, glancing across the bar at her.
Shit.
She looked away, narrowly avoiding eye contact. Her mind struggled to place him amidst the nagging familiarity. Old spacer, moderately scruffy, sharp blue eyes. Not a corporate type, not a military type...
Hamburg. Shaw's crew. An armored man bleeding into the snow.
She should leave.
Her eyes flicked up. He was already halfway across. Too late to slip away.
"Jaeger, I thought that was you."
"Rob."
He gestured to the seat across from her. "Mind if I sit?"
She didn't answer. Moved her jacket to her lap.
He interprets that as an invitation, and settles into the chair - brown bottle perched in one hand. "What are you drinking?"
"Whatever they have that isn't whiskey."
He set his bottle on the table. "You still..."
She waited.
"Never mind. Doesn't matter."
She nodded once. "Probably not."
He looked away. "Still got the Wayfarer."
"Yeah? How's she flying."
"Holds together well enough." He took a long pull from the bottle. "Different crew now, mostly."
"Yeah."
He was quiet for a moment. "Tanya went back to the Corps."
A beat.
"Floretta still comes by."
He drained the bottle, picked it back up. "Gotta get back to the ship."
"Yeah."
He stood. Hesitated. "It's good to see you, Jaeger."
She looked directly at him. "Take care of yourself, Rob."
He walked off. She took another drag of the gin. The taste was suddenly sour.
────────────────────────────────────────────────── end of record · jaeger@second-hand:~$
────────────────────────────────────────────────── LOCATION On board the Second Hand DATE 04.08.836 ARCHIVE personal log · title: 'Drift' · access: restricted ──────────────────────────────────────────────────
She was back at her desk. Ship secure. But she didn't feel it.
She browsed through one of her preferred job boards, the type where everyone and everything was communicated using pseudonyms.
Government job - no.
Surveillance, in... Liberty - no.
Tracking a ship - Tohoku - no.
Another one in Liberty - no.
The jobs were all in orbit of the war starting between Liberty and Kusari. Bad news for her - she didn't do wars. Not anymore. Wars came with causes and long term commitments.
She'd be hearing from ESRD soon. She'd have to turn it down. Assets who turned down the call of duty tended to get downgraded from asset to risk.
The focus wasn't there, so she shifted to something that didn't require it. She pulled up the Second Hand's firewall and started running through it. Searching for gaps. Routine maintenance. Meditative work, something she'd been doing regularly since she was five.
Minutes later, she was on her feet - pacing the room, for a reason she couldn't place.
She paced through the halls of the ship. Wanted to throw something away. Wanted to clean something.
Went to a drawer, opened it.
Bandages. From an old wound.
Shut the drawer quickly. Those were a good thing to have.
Poured a glass of water she didn't drink. Looked out at space. Sat on the lumpy couch. Feeling didn't shake.
Went to her bedroom's workstation - the small one - and sat down. Saw her reflection in the inactive screen. That definitely didn't fix it.
Clicked it to life to get rid of the mirror more than anything. Opened the comm panel, typed a couple words.
Hey. It's been-
Delete. Delete.
Flung herself out of the chair. Onto the bed. She wasn't tired. Closed her eyes anyways.
"Goodnight, Lisa." JADE's voice.
She didn't answer.
────────────────────────────────────────────────── end of record · jaeger@second-hand:~$
