Belters

Chapter 07:

Chapter 07:AD 2100 Earth Orbit – Phoenix Station

Long ago, Lea learned success in life was often more a matter of who you knew rather than what you knew. Despite the solitary nature of her chosen profession, she needed a few reliable contacts, or low people in high places, to get things done.

The select few she’d worked with over the years, all willing to help her out in a sticky situation, came from many walks of life. Some worked for a cause, most worked for some otherworldly gain. Cash had a way of greasing the rails of progress. She only trusted them enough to get what she needed. Hers proved a lonely life, the way she preferred it.

The fact she worked for the highest bidder served her well in life. Her unflinching quest for power and influence via cold hard capital had made for some strange bedfellows over the years, literally and figuratively. Now she needed help from a few contacts to escape the West and work her way back into space… maybe for the last time. She would miss Earth, but she would miss breathing more.

One of her most useful contacts remained a member of the ruling Party in the Eastern-Alliance. For various reasons, she only used him when absolutely necessary.

Back before he became a rising star under ruling committee protection, Lea helped Pan out of a prickly situation with a supervisor who set him up as the fall guy in a fake rice-making scheme.

It was dangerous for anyone caught up in the scandal. The penalty for selling fake foodstuffs in the East included the death penalty, but the opportunity to make great loads of cash off the unwashed hungry was worth the risk to some.

Lucky for Pan, Lea discovered the real crook, and with the scapegoat acting as a whistleblower, earned him a reputation as a corporate watchdog—and a nice cushy job for the Party. All through the use of socialized media.

It was Pan’s contacts that made the arrangements to get her out of the West. All under cover of diplomate travel vouchers. The safest way to travel unmolested across borders.

Before leaving her life in California, she tried to track down a few leads. Anything to point her inquiring mind in the correct direction.

Safely clear of the combat zone, she made her appointment. As expected, she was sorely disappointed. No one bothered to join her, if only to see if she survived the attack. Not a scrap of evidence had been left behind. The lack of an assassin ready to finish the job left her to believe she wasn’t the primary target.

As much as she wanted to believe the world revolved around her, she knew only a few hard-core individuals wanted her dead badly enough to go to such elaborate lengths. She reckoned her vehicle merely served as the decoy to open the gates to the secured CBD. If the authorities hadn’t responded with overwhelming force, the rebels would have murdered thousands in the running battle inside the protected zone. A huge political statement for some radical group or the other.

As of the last report, a new Free Earth group had taken responsibility. The chances of that information being fake news were high. She wouldn’t put it past any organization to sponsor a false flag attack in order to further some unseen agenda. Lea was that much of a cynic.

She trusted few. That was how her list of adversaries remained so short and the list of known associates smaller. When she finished, the guilty held little power. Most lost their lives as a matter of the course of events. Lea proved thorough at her job.

The few of her enemies alive or free from justice, the people she’d used or duped over the decades, weren’t resourceful enough to pull off that size of an operation.

She came to believe the whole meeting was meant to send some sort of message to someone. The problem was, without knowing the sender and receiver, Lea didn’t even know what language they spoke, let alone the message.

With much sorrow, she came to believe her death was only the cherry on top of the violent sundae.

That meant FlyRight Corporation might be innocent too. Only a fall guy, in case she survived. An evil corporation for her to focus on while the guilty party celebrated their successful operation.

In San Francisco, her investigation ground to a halt. With no target to vent her frustration on, she went with her gut. Get her ass off Earth before someone started asking questions she didn’t want to answer.

The brief violent attack must have created hours of security footage. Lea was certain the frames grabbed a clear shot of her actions, from multiple angles. Since her image had not been released online or on the news, she assumed it was blacked out for some reason. Her cover was blown on Earth.

Someone wanted her to return to the normal life so they might scoop her up. She didn’t bother going home to pack a bag. A quick stop at a convenient drop in the Mission District and she had her get-out-of-dodge bag slung over her shoulder. Time to disappear and start a new life somewhere safer.

The contacts made over the years served to get her the hell away from San Francisco and the reach of the Western governments. The choices were limited.

There were three elevators taking passengers into geosynchronous orbit. Chances were too good she would be on the watch list for the Western-Alliance platform that knocked out a trip to South America.

The European Union tended to march lockstep with the West. Old ties were the hardest to break. The two political entities had jumped into bed fifty years earlier. All in an effort to keep the deplorables from taking over their countries. It was an ugly period in history, driven by class warfare and division. It allowed the rich to become more powerful, and the developing nations to fall further behind. Little changed to break up that unholy alliance.

If the West wanted Lea, there was no doubt the EU would hand her over if caught.

Many parts of the world buckled under the demands of the economic superpowers. Africa, and the nation-states that called the second-largest continent home, struggled to keep their independence from the stronger economies.

They succeeded, but at a huge cost. The developing countries of Africa bypassed the increased industrialization the rest of the world enjoyed, all offered from the developed nations with thick strings attached. Since the African Union had yet to complete the heavy-lift platform at Kilimanjaro, that greatly limited her choices.

She liked her life too much to risk it in the hands of the Ravens and their derelict homemade ships. Each trip with the Ravens was a game of Russian roulette that they would explode during the climb out of the gravity well.

The only choice left, the Eastern-Alliance and their Fenghuang lift system off the coast of Indonesia. Fenghuang roughly translated into phoenix. Naming their space elevator after a mythical bird that tended to burst into flames might not have been the most comforting word choice, but it played well to the Eastern cultures.

East, West, North, South, the politics of the world didn’t matter to Lea as long as the deposit came in cryptocurrency. She’d worked for a wide range of private and partisan employers regardless of their geopolitical world view. Lea was a capitalist in the truest sense of the word, working for the highest bidder.

The five-day trip out to the orbital portion of the lift was the worst part of the journey. The platform created a form of gravity through acceleration, but the habitation space on the platform remained spartan and limited. The most luxurious bunk tickets resembled a train car with a small cabin that held four single racks crammed into a small common standing area.

Everyone else shared the main cabin with chairs that reclined into couches. No privacy anywhere. Meals were taken from protein packs the passengers drank through a tube. Despite the perception of normal gravity, outside the confines of the platform, Lea knew the conditions were near weightless, vacuum, intense toxic radiation, blistering hot in the sun, and well below freezing in the shade. Deadly for humankind. If the platform lost acceleration at any time, objects not latched down would fly about the cabin with fatal outcomes.

There were no children on this transit. Humans had been working hard to carry as many bodies into space as possible, but the cost of lifting weight into orbit still limited passengers to the super-rich or workers that had a chance to pay off the debt incurred. Besides, space remained an incredibly deadly place to live. Few parents wanted their precious gene seeds exposed to the hazards involved.

The most dangerous portion of the journey lay behind them. The lift slipped through the trash orbiting at low earth orbit and the Van Allen belt without incident.

Not her first time off Earth, Lea never got used to the idea of being wiped out by what amounted to flying trash or sunlight. Thank goodness the pickers worked around the clock to clean up the garbage the first century of space exploration left behind. Humans, unsatisfied with polluting their own planet, worked hard to make the space surrounding it near uninhabitable as well.

They had passed midpoint with no problems and made the shift to deceleration. The momentary loss of gravity while the cabin rotated brought the normal squeals of joy from a few, and vomit from several others.

One of her bunkmates proved a puker. He’d suffered from space sickness the entire transit. He had stayed in rack 2A since the lift’s departure.

Lea wrinkled her nose at the thought. The Asian man had been sick, hidden in his rack, privacy curtain closed since they boarded.

Not satisfied with calling him 2A for the duration of the trip, she did some snooping. It was what she was paid for after all. It never hurt to keep her skills honed.

In the end, there wasn’t much to find. 2A traveled with his small case at the foot of his rack, feet pressed against the diplomatic-sealed attaché. The man traveled light. The name tag said he was Reo Ng, traveling from lower Phoenix Station on through to Ceres.

He reeked… not only of vomit but as a company man. The chances were slim he was sent to follow her, but she admitted to herself his act of space sickness was an outstanding cover. He couldn’t be a spook or assassin. His demeanor didn’t fit the job description.

From the first sight of him, she should have known he was going to be a basket case. At the terminal Earthside, he sat with a scowl plastered on his face. Distinctly out of place from the others who waited for their turn to dress-out before boarding.

Space travel was novel enough. Most passengers had never traveled out of the Earth’s atmosphere. Everyone, no matter the age, showed different levels of emotions, from the stress of fear to exhilaration and excitement, but anger never crossed their faces.

Even Lea, who lost everything and had been off Earth more than most, was excited for her return to space. Most spooks were meant to blend in. Mister Reo Ng made himself stand out on purpose.

Because of the stench, Lea was forced out of the cabin to intermingle more than she normally allowed herself to. Despite the air recyclers set to high, the filters could not remove the stench of sweat and vomit that wafted out from 2A to fill the small space.

In self-defense, before bed, Lea rubbed a small dab of menthol on her upper lip to block the smell. A trick she learned while once working with the dead. Not a story she told at cocktail parties. Not that she was that type of drinker.

The fellow travelers on the platform weren’t comprised entirely of Asians, but Lea and her fair skin were in the minority.

Forced to mingle, she’d befriended a fellow traveler named Tian Lee. They had chatted about various subjects during the trip up the line. Tian loved to chatter with anyone. They had a gift for languages.

Lea used her backup persona as a pharmaceutical inspector traveling to the manufacturing facilities of several off-world sites. It was a cover she’d never used. Just boring enough to keep all but the nosiest from asking questions.

Tian proved to be that interested, no matter what. A low-level programmer, heading to the new Pluto Station for a position with FlyRight, Lea wasn’t sure what to think about Tian.

Dark straight hair cropped close to the sides and spiked on top. Wearing the unisex baggy coverall provided each passenger, and the lack of telling lumps and bumps, Lea couldn’t tell if Tian was a he or a she. Like so many youths of the world, zhe had taken to the androgynous look melding both sexes into one.

Not that Lea really cared, nor did she ever consider herself a social justice warrior, but she would like to know if Tian was flirting or simply being friendly and practicing zer English. Given the limitations of the English language, Lea just made pronouns up as she went along. Regardless, any diversion from the tedious trip might be a welcome relief.

One thing Tian excelled at was holding up zer side of a conversation. Zhe would go on for great lengths of time about any given subject, and all zhe required from Lea was an occasional grunt, as if she paid the least bit of attention. Adept at compartmentalization, the mindless prattle allowed Lea to escape the other passengers’ inquiries and the stench of the cabin at the same time. In a way, it was the perfect symbiotic relationship.

One day out from the upper terminus, the soft door of the cabin pulled back, and the occupant of rack 2A stumbled out into the open.

Reo Ng looked like s**t.

Hours earlier, Tian and Lea had escaped the putrid confines of the shared cabin for the fresher air in the common room. Better to drink down lunch with others than break out the menthol.

The man asked, “Where are we?”

“Space,” Lea quipped a tad too quickly. She was growing too accustomed to those around her. Time to get off the lift and back to her normal solitude.

Tian had been talking about something before the wraith’s appearance brought the cabin to silent stares.

The newcomer shook his head, “How far out?”

Lea expected the man’s English to be broken, or spoken with a heavy accent, but Reo appeared fluent, at least in English.

Strange, the man repeated the sentence in Mandarin.

Tian answered quick enough.

Lea nearly replied in Mandarin as well, but that would have revealed the fact she was different from most North Americans with their limited world knowledge. Better to hide her language skills, simpler to eavesdrop that way.

The man croaked, “Water…”

Tian pointed out the dispenser and returned to the subject they discussed before the specter’s appearance. “As I was telling you.” Zhe held up the protein pack. “I saw on Keeper that the company that makes these are being investigated for rat droppings found in the packaging.”

“What?” Lea wished she’d not heard that. Her stomach did flip flops.

Reo Ng must have heard Tian too. He rushed to the head, green cast to his face.

“Keeper is an Eastern social media site.”

“I know what Keeper is…” Lea didn’t need to hear any more about the Party taking down bad news. Both East and West excelled at controlling the flow of information. Better to change the subject. “What do you know about him?” Lea motioned with her head at the back of the stranger who rushed to the toilet facilities.

Tian pointed with the pouch before saying, “Not a thing, but he screams of Party official.” Zhe took a deep drink from the pouch.

The Westerner placed the unfinished meal pack next to her hip. “Why do you say that?”

Tian shrugged and whispered around the straw. “I watched him in the prep area… He’s binary… a suit… a conformist. Haven’t you ever noticed the way doubis dress? He is a tool of the state.”

Lea needed to stifle the laugh that nearly burst from her lips. She’d heard the Chinese term before, but never to describe a Party official, and never in such a public place. The chances of being monitored were extremely high. What made doubi such a perfect slam was it sounded a lot like dopey. Lea motioned to the overhead with her eyes and shot Tian a questioning look.

Zhe shrugged once again and whispered, “Out of all the billions of people on Earth, and the many more millions out in space, how can the Party listen to every word we say?” Tian wasn’t bold enough to draw too much attention to zerself, but the audacity of the young programmer shocked the Westerner. “Besides, what do they care about rat droppings?”

“Tian, I hate to be a party pooper, but I might be spending a long time in space.” She picked up her discarded protein pack and held it up to zer. “I might want to eat at some point in the future. Can we not talk about rat crap any longer?”

Tian blushed. “Sorry… I was just making small talk.”

Lea reached out and patted zer leg. “It’s all right, been a long transit this trip is all.” She watched Reo, the possible Party or corporate suit, fight his way into the zero-gravity head. That should be a new adventure for the man. Lea whispered, “You know I’m cissexual.”

Tian snorted, “That’s obvious, but I still think you’re okay.”

AD 2100 Earth Orbit – Phoenix Station

Inside the head, Reo stared into the mirror. He looked like s**t. Over the years, he’d seen better-looking corpses. Chances were good he shouldn’t have drunk as much as he did on the train, but there are times when situations arise that require strong drink in great quantities. This was such a time.

His nose felt like some elf had crept into his rack and filled his head with wet cement. No matter how many times he blew his nose, nothing came out. The dry air of space might be the thing that ended up killing him. It would have been nice to have some traveling companion to share his pain with.

Given his position in the ESPer Force, he long knew his life would be spent alone. There was no place for personal relationships. Families were out of the question, a liability an agent couldn’t afford.

While in training, he’d been forced to provide a genetic sample. When the Force decided a suitable female came along, he would be the father to a new little agent or more. The details of his fatherhood would never be disclosed to him or the mother. The child would be a ward of the Party, raised by strangers.

Rumors ran through the Force that the higher-level ESPers had hundreds if not thousands of offspring working their way up the hierarchy. Given the Eastern-Alliance admitted repeatably abusing genetic manipulation, Reo wouldn’t be surprised if the Force played god, trying to create the best ESPer possible.

None of that mattered. Reo wasn’t in a position to protest the end-use of his seed.

What tore his heart out was the picture of his contact on Ceres.

Shortly after leaving his training to his first posting in Manila, Reo met a young graduate student, Vizminda Abe.

There was a time he deluded himself into thinking she might be the one to settle down with. The one Reo would risk death for.

That was until she received her first posting out of school. A research position on the Eastern-Alliance Mars colony II.

Reo might have been ready to throw his life away for her. After her posting came through, it proved painfully clear Vizminda wasn’t willing to reciprocate.

The young woman celebrated into the wee hours of the morning with her classmates. Failing to inform Reo until after lunch the following day she was on her way into space.

He never recovered. Never forgave her. Years later, he refused to trust another with his heart. It was unhealthy to hold a grudge for years, but Reo didn’t give a s**t.

He knew it would have been child’s play, with a simple forced suggestion, to change Mindy’s mind. He had the power to turn her into the dutiful wife many men only dreamed of. The thought turned his stomach. He considered the actions akin to mind rape. There was little doubt if he did something like that for personal gain, the path started would be dark and painful.

Out of all the people, billions on Earth, to be teamed up with, the woman who broke his heart was unfathomable. Babushka screwed him on purpose, Reo was sure of it.

The reality of the situation came back to him.

The beauty of being sick for the transit meant he hadn’t needed to struggle with the blasted low gravity facilities until now.

Now he really needed to evacuate. Taking the time to read the instructions on the proper operation of the waste collection system nearly caused an accident of epic proportions.

Alone in the small cubicle, he sat, considering his options. They were limited. If he skipped on this assignment, he would quickly run out of credit. The majority of his funds were locked up in the ESPer Force’s banking services. Just one more way the Party controlled him and his peers.

Seemed like he had no choice but to help his ex. Reo found himself totally screwed.