Galactic hellcats, p.1
Galactic Hellcats, page 1
Galactic Hellcats
Copyright 2020 by Marie Vibbert
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or any electronic or mechanical means, including information and retrieval storage systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Cover art © 2020 by I. L. Vinkur
Design and interior by ElfElm Publishing
Available as a trade paperback, hardcover, and eBook from Vernacular Books.
ISBN (TPB) 978-1-952283-07-9
ISBN (eBook) 978-1-952283-08-6
Visit us online at VernacularBooks.com
For my original galactic girl gang:
my evil twin Grace Vibbert and our best friend Shannon Heffner.
01:
Ki gets her ride
A starscape turned before Ki—breathtaking, banded with blue and green nebulae. She reached toward the velvet black and the stars abruptly became a glistening slab of marbled meat. Ki covered her face. She was starving, and the food ads on the projection wall were pure torture.
Ki crouched inside a dumpster frame, thighs aching, waiting for the trash bot to trundle by. It didn’t smell great. The Mars Tourism ad was her only distraction in the rotating video line-up. Few people were in the shopping center this late, scurrying on their way to someplace else under the fuzzy grey sky. A chubby girl pressed her thumb to a doorplate and walked through a hologram urging her to wave her hand at it to try different styles of pants. The hologram thought the departing store worker was interested in bright colors and shorter lengths and spoke eagerly to her departing form like a horny hustler. Ki made a mental note to tell Ethan about that. He’d think it was hilarious.
“Hey!”
Ki froze, veins turning to ice. She couldn’t afford another mark on her record. Two strikes already as an adult, and the third would send her to hard time. Running footsteps, pelting up behind her. Could she make a break for it? Her joints ached, she braced to jump.
The figure ran past her, chasing after the chubby girl, who turned and waved in recognition. They linked arms and continued to the train stop.
Relaxing without giving up her crouch hurt. Her foot slipped on something that felt like chicken skin. The display urged her to travel the galaxy at Café Andromeda.
The trash bot wobbled around the corner at last, a barge with a flat face and two arms at one end, taking its own sweet time picking up each trash container and inspecting it. It reached Ki’s dumpster, the one with a Ki-sized hole in the bottom. (That had taken four separate trips to cut at the bin and check that no one noticed or cared.) Ki squeezed her arms tight to her sides and hoped the bin would lift clean around her. The bot lifted the bin, as it did with all of them, and the back of the hole only brushed Ki’s hair. This bin would register empty, but the bot still shook empty bins over the compactor on its butt. Perhaps it was programmed like that to make it look busier.
While the bot shook the bin, Ki jimmied the lock and climbed into the bot’s center compartment. The greasy interior had the particular acrid stink of sour beer and fermented soda pop.
The bot continued on its way with Ki in its belly. Her shoes slid in unidentifiable goo. She tried to hold herself in place with one fingertip pressed hard against the compartment roof and kept her eyes on her wrist-screen. A green dot (representing her) approached a little blue flag. The bot dropped a bin in its storage space and Ki wriggled to keep her spot by the door. The bot swayed and paused. Ki held perfectly still. The bots had a function to detect unwanted passengers—usually rats—by shifts in content weight, but Ki thought she’d killed that when she’d uploaded her malware that morning.
The bot continued, whatever had momentarily confused it forgotten. It inspected another empty bin. The leading edge of her dot touched the flag on her screen. Ki kicked the door open and rolled out into the fresher air, her heart in her teeth until she could look up and see if she had been discovered.
A security bot whizzed by overhead, having just scanned the space Ki now occupied. Right on time for its schedule. The little red dot on her screen. Perfect. Now she was in the “employees only” alleyway and had two minutes to get out of sight.
Ki peeled a sticker off the back of her hand. It was a conductive plastic circuit with sticky goo on one side. Printed illegally at the local library after hours. It fit the lock perfectly and it gave with a soft click.
She pushed the handle, however, and another bolt caught. Oh balls. Did no one trust their door locks anymore? Ki felt offended on behalf of the MedeCo lock company. She fished her longest lock pick between the door and frame, feeling for the offending bolt. A shadow fell over her.
She froze and shrank against the wall, staring up helplessly like a mouse caught in a trap. The shadow glided gracefully over the next building. Not a cop, not a drone, but a late shopper heading home in a gorgeous solo-flyer. A ShadowKat 88. Ki knew the shape as intimately as the interior of a four-tumbler lock. The 88 was smooth as a river pebble, elegantly elongated around its driver with this delicate hint of vestigial fins, like a curve cut on the underside. Ki found herself staring at the patch of sky it had left, at the void where someone had gotten away from gravity.
Now she was going to get caught for dreaming. Ki didn’t bother to check the time. If she didn’t get in, she was as good as arrested. The pick found the bolt. It wasn’t a drop, it was a pull. She wriggled her magnet wand out of her sleeve and passed it over, feeling the slight tension as the bar was picked up.
One more glance to make sure no one was in the alley watching, and she was in. The back of the store had what she needed: duffle bags, jackets, and security tie-downs that hadn’t been upgraded in years. She always stole a duffle bag these days; one of her favorite fences collected them.
She stuffed her wig in the first bag she found. Then she freed items from their packaging and dropped them in until the bag was full.
She stopped and considered a cap emblazoned with Ethan’s favorite team. Ethan used to get presents for her. One time a rich john left him an extra night in a deluxe hotel room. Ki had drowned in towels that were unreal in their softness and they’d split tiny bottles of liquor playing “Never Have I Ever” on the big bed. They both lied so much the game was meaningless, but that had definitely been the best gift. Four years they’d been best friends. It should have been longer. They should’ve met as little kids.
She left the hat. She couldn’t give a petty theft as a gift—it felt like passing along the guilt. Stealing a lot of things, selling them, and using the money, however, didn’t ping her conscience in the slightest.
The duffle could barely zip closed. Time for the dangerous part.
There was a release on the front door for staff or customers caught by the automated closing. She hit it with her prize possession: a signal scammer that had a recording of some poor Joe’s palmprint. He was probably long dead, but still getting caught in shops all across North America. “Gate will open for five seconds,” the cheery voice of some also long-dead woman announced, and a floating five appeared, flooding the shop with blue light as it mutated to a four. Oh! Her sticker! She dashed to the back of the store. She didn’t want to have to print another.
Holding the sticker aloft in two fingers she slid through a fading number two like a baseball player stealing home.
“Did you see that?” she announced. To no one. She got to her feet with a sigh, wishing there had been someone to see, to share the moment with, even if it was a cop.
Ethan was going to laugh so hard when she told him about that.
Ki walked out the front entrance of the shopping arcade in a blue cap and black tracksuit, carrying a duffel bag full of merchandise. This was the real risk, this moment here, walking casually past the human security, blending with the shop drudges.
Ki didn’t know if normal people looked at security guards, or how long, or if they smiled. It was a question that occupied much of her time. She let her eyes glide over Officer Splendig and scan ahead like she was looking for someone. “Nick!” she called, raising a hand. She hurried her pace.
She felt, as she always did, a delicious jolt of pure excitement as she crossed the threshold of capture: past the guard and his area of responsibility, out into the public street. She knew she had a dorky grin on her face, but hopefully that would be interpreted as her relief at having found “Nick.” She didn’t know anyone named Nick, which is why she chose the name. She hurried, picking out a particularly oblivious man at the train stop, hunched over a hologram. She ran up to him. “Nick! Nick it’s…” She reached him and stopped. “Oh, sorry. You’re not Nick.”
Ki bit her tongue not to laugh at the man’s confused expression. She turned to the ticket bot and flashed her pass.
The RTA had upgraded security again and her fake ride pass didn’t work. Balls. She couldn’t stand there attracting attention. She started walking along the tracks. It was a gamble. The cops never liked people walking with bags, and doubly so on the tracks. But if she made it, if no one tried to rob her on the way, if the fence was generous, her month of preparation would pay off with a month of food and shelter. If she haggled right, maybe even something extra. Something sweet. Something for Ethan.
Ki first met Ethan on a street corner. She was running for her life, having gotten identified by a store’s security bot, and a human security guard was chasing
He turned her to the wall and gave her the best, slowest, longest kiss of her life. If the security guard saw it, he must have decided not to interrupt honest commerce.
She’ll never forget the languid way he ended the kiss, lifting his soft lips from hers and looking down at her bliss to ask, “Where are your parents, kid?”
She punched him in the dick for that. She made to run off but he grabbed her ankle and then she was down and she thought he was going to take her to the cops, but he held up his hands. “Hey, sorry. Sorry. I’ll make it up to you. Do you have a place to spend the night?”
It wasn’t exactly a coincidence that she was between homes.
Ethan’s roommates were out. He had a 3D projector and a subscription to Knights of Saint George. Warmth, indoors, and her favorite show. She was miserable with wanting it. “But… you were working.”
“I can take a night off.”
She didn’t like how he looked at her, like she was helpless. A kitten he’d found. “My mom’s on Mars,” she said, because her mom had always wanted to go to Mars. It was a lie she’d been telling long enough to half believe it herself.
“Emigrated all by her lonesome?” Ethan wasn’t buying it.
Ki quickly changed the subject. “You like Knights of Saint George?”
“There are only two types of people in the world: those who like Knights of Saint George, and assholes.” Ethan lay on a sofa and made the gesture that started the show. He was laconic and gorgeous, a cat in a sunbeam.
Ki told herself she wasn’t going to make a pass, that her ego had suffered enough already at Ethan’s hands, but did it have to be Knights of Saint George? It always got her going. Since freaking grade school. The sleek little phallic solo-flyers penetrating ecstatic nebulas. The idea of freedom they represented, flying off into the galaxy, nothing but her and her ship. She never made it through the opening credits without wanting to grope someone, and Ethan was there. He grabbed her hands. “Seriously, how old are you?”
“Eighteen. And a half.”
He stretched out his full length, which was quite a lot of length, and threw back his long neck. “Bullshit. I’m nineteen and I’m Methuselah next to you.”
“I really am older than I look.” She tried to get close to him again. “You didn’t mind kissing me on the street.”
He let her kiss him, then, but pulled her off as she started rounding third base. “I’m sorry.” He kissed her chastely on the forehead. “It’s not that I don’t want to. I use it all up with the clients. I have to save my energy.”
Ki suspected most of the women Ethan dated didn’t take that for an answer, but she respected him. Damn it.
They started meeting once a week to watch the serial. When Ki found two tickets for the space elevator in a data cube she’d palmed, she immediately asked Ethan. “A present. You showed me the stars on a projector. I’ll show you them for real!”
How lovely the elevator car was, how clean and new and shiny. How beautiful the people were in their clean, unwrinkled clothes. How accidentally she let slip, “If we can’t find tickets back, do you want to live up here forever?”
Ethan stiffened. “You don’t have return tickets?”
“We’ll figure something out?”
He jumped up, pacing, ruffling his hair, scaring the other passengers. Ki worried he’d throw her out an airlock.
At Top Station, she shrank into her seat as the other passengers filed out. Maybe, if they stayed in their seats, they’d be taken down?
Ethan scooped her up and dragged her to the ticketing counter. In a posh voice she’d never heard him use, he said, “I demand to see a manager. My round-trip ticket claims to be one-way! No, I will not sit down. I will not be quiet. This is my birthday!”
Ki had never intentionally drawn attention to herself in her life. She cringed and hung as far back as Ethan would let her. Somehow, the crazy scheme worked. Or at least got them dumped on a shuttle to Laguna Station, where the transport company main offices were. She drank in every second of the stars and a sliver of blue Earth in a tiny porthole.
On Laguna Station they had enough money for one meal, no berth, and the station guards stared hard at Ki the second she was in sight and never looked away.
Ethan lifted her against his hip, reveling in his strength in the lower gravity. “My little space pirate! I could kill you!” He was laughing. It was heaven.
They were really in space, even if all they could see were corridors that could have been in a subway station, the same feel of many people passing, the diminutive stores crammed into corners. Ki felt tall for the first time in her life, and not just because of reduced gravity. She didn’t want to come back down to Earth. Ethan did. He had a job, an apartment, friends. He charmed the pants, literally, off a delivery ship pilot to get them back. Her weight returned with a feeling of finality, like losing wings.
For two days, they had been part of a larger world.
All Souls Hospice was a swank place. As such, they didn’t care for Ki. The employees never said as much, and the robot attendants were programmed to be polite, but the retina scan at the front door continually forgot she was the invited guest of a resident. She knew she hadn’t been banned for breaking rules, because she regularly hacked into the security system and confirmed she hadn’t been caught. There were no notes or warnings from the staff on her record. Still, every time she came, the door refused to let her in and she had to call the desk and wait while the robot attendant contacted a real live human with the authority to override the guest settings. Real live humans always gave Ki the stink-eye.
Ki found it easier to climb the building and slip in through the window. Fortunately, Ethan had a private room one floor above a decorative band of stonework.
Ki lifted the sash and held it up with her knee while she ducked under, nearly over-balancing because of the duffel on her back. She fell to the floor with a crash.
She jumped up and raised her hands over her head. “Ta Da!”
The pile of musty blankets shivered, then rustled, and a tousled head peeked out. Ethan was getting much too thin; he looked like fuzz on a stick. Ki dropped onto the end of the bed and opened her new duffle. “Look what I got!” She triumphantly produced his favorite chocolates.
Ethan turned a slightly greyer shade and she knew she’d misjudged how welcome candy would be. He covered his head again.
“Come on, it’s not like you need to worry about your figure.” Ki curled up in the space beside Ethan on the bed.
There’d been a nasty trap in Ethan’s DNA, a genetic malfunction that coated his lungs and stomach in a protein. It made him not want to eat and it made his breathing hard. There was some stupid name for it. The doctors had been all “oh yes, it often strikes in the early twenties,” like they knew the very depth and breadth of the muck destroying Ethan. Probably they did.
All Ki saw was her friend getting weaker and thinner. All she could think about was how there was free healthcare on Mars. “Don’t you want to eat anything? What can I get you? Anything at all. You say it, I’ll bring it. It’ll be a challenge.”
He gave her the stink-eye. “You could steal…” Ethan’s tongue dragged on his lip, dry on dry. “You could steal the squeak out of a rat. I’m past eating, you little kleptomaniac.”
“Don’t say that. I went to the good grocery on Vine. I got saltines and soda and even some things that are green, or, well, look like things that are green in their natural state.”
He shook his head, but she opened her bag and set crackers and soda in front of him. “You took care of me when I needed it,” she said. “So, it’s my turn. You’re going to love this.”
She smeared some pink meat-paste on a saltine and held it out to him. He pushed her hand with the back of his. “I want to give you something, while I’m still conscious.”
“Now you’re pissing me off.”
