Sunday @ction - 1/2 (Original; ~12k words; 15+)
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SUNDAY @CTION
"Stop the presses," bellowed Sunday as she crashed through a fortieth-story window into the @ction! headquarters, her burning skimmer shooting right through the holologo proclaiming them to be the world's most trust-worthy news-media conglomeration and into the six times life-size statue of Bogle Shrimmer, current Editor-in-Chief. While her erstwhile co-workers generally screamed, cursed, and ran around trying to avoid the ensuing rain of debris, Sunday jumped from desk to desk (and occasionally head to head) to reach the doors to the EiC's office and kicked them in. "Stop the presses!"
"We don't have presses, Sunday," Shrimmer said without looking up from the sextuple-screen holo-station.
"I know, but 'arrange a simultaneous breaking-news slot in all the feeds' doesn't have quite the right ring to it, and why mess with the classics, eh? Now," said Sunday, digging in her cleavage for the data-crystals, "get your ass out, would you? There's a fleet of extremely pissed off Yrgian Deathbots on my tail and if they get here before the push, we're all extremely buggered. And not in the good way."
Shrimmer sighed. "Sunday," he said, rolling back in his suspension chair, moustaches quivering. "You know I admire you, but, really--"
"What? Don't be daft," Sunday laughed, shoving her way into the gap and stabbing at buttons. "You're a misogynistic racist bigot and you'd happily see me butchered by Hate Drones if it didn't affect your bottom line. Now, shut up and shove off while I make you another fortune."
"Who are we going to get sued by this time?"
"You can watch the news, same as all the other schlubs." Sunday pounded the crystal into the data-port. "Of course, since you haven't upgraded your systems since the bloody Tortall regime, you might just have the pleasure of watching me die horribly just before you also die horribly. Unlike you, Yrgian Deathbots don't discriminate even--"
There was another explosion from outside and yet more screaming.
"Shit," said Sunday with feeling.
"Perhaps if you'd stop blowing up my offices, the insurance premiums would go down and I might actually be able to pay you more," Shrimmer suggested dryly.
Sunday frowned at him sceptically. "You? Pay me more?"
"Well, I might think about it a bit, at least," Shrimmer said with an air of affront.
Clanking and gleaming, three Yrgian Deathbots barged into the room. They were squat little things but what they lacked in height they made up in the weapons that bristled from every surface, making them look rather oddly like metallic hedgehogs. Nestled behind the deadly array, numerous optics glinted.
Shrimmer pointed at Sunday. "There's the dyke bitch. Shoot her."
"If you actually had balls, I would punch you right in them," Sunday said. "Except you'd probably enjoy it."
"I should suggest that to Mistress Bob," Shrimmer mused.
"Excuse me," said the squattest and most armed of the Deathbots in a warm, cultured voice. "I don't mean to hurry your flirting--" It raised his voice over their spluttered protests. "--but we do have some killing to be done, so if you wouldn't mind just telling us where the goods are so we don't have to blow this entire building up? There's a good fellows."
"You could do that," Sunday admitted, "but--"
"No they bloody can't," Shrimmer snapped. "Do you have any idea the overheads--"
"Shut up!"
"You shut up!"
"Perhaps you could both be quiet?" offered the Deathbot, while the others rattled their weapons in what was possibly agreement, possibly a threat, or possibly just boredom. "Its nothing personal, you understand; we just get paid more if we kill you before the, uh, deadline." It chuckled a little. "Oh, dear. 'Deadline'. Sorry about that."
"Might I say something?" Sunday asked.
"Is it the location of the data crystals?" the Deathbot asked.
"It's certainly related," Sunday allowed, darting forward to grab a remote off the desk. She let out a triumphant "Hah!" while waving it at them.
There was a confused hum. Optics clicked opened and closed. The head Deathbot asked, rather dubiously, "Is that a weapon?"
"The best weapon there is," Sunday said, pressing the button. "The Truth."
Holoscreens blazed into life all around them, not just the six work screens over the desk, but along every wall as well, and even the ceiling. From all of them, Sunday looked back, her dark eyes sparkling with star reporter fervour. Admittedly, her thick and currently red curls were looking rather better coiffed, and her gold eye-shadow had been tweaked up a few shades for better contrast with the rich brown of her, admittedly, airbrushed skin, but everyone did post-production work. There was nothing wrong with that.
"Did you make yourself thinner?" Shrimmer asked.
"No!" Sunday glared at him, indignant. "Shut up and listen!"
"--can exclusively reveal irrefutably evidence of the TerraMax corporation's shady business practices, ranging from the merely unethical, through the absolutely illegal, to the dangerous and potentially globally catastrophic. Long championed as the front-runner of the terraforming trade, reclaiming and reinvigorating otherwise worthless land, TerraMax has traded on a reputation of fair prices and ethical actions, but, here at Action!, we can exclusively reveal a long and sordid history of fraud and essentially fatal cost-cutting--"
"To be fair," Sunday said, lowering the volume on herself, "I had to edit that on the fly while under hot pursuit. I'm usually much more eloquent."
"Really?" said Shrimmer with apparently genuine surprise.
Sunday glared. "Why haven't I killed you yet?"
"I pay you," Shrimmer pointed out.
"Good point. Anyway, that's live. On every feed, right now, blasting out across the airwaves and the networks, into a billion hands, ears and eyes. And look--" She clicked the button again, turning the data overlay on. "That would be TerraMax's stock taking a massive hit. Or 'TerrorMax', perhaps?"
She grinned at them. They all stared blankly back.
"No? No."
"Bugger their stock," Shrimmer said, making grabby hands for the remote, which Sunday quickly held up out of his reach. "How are our viewing figures? Are we getting clicks? What's the ad revenue?"
"Is money all you care about?" Sunday asked. "No, really, I'm actually asking."
"I like my fish," Shrimmer said. "They don't talk back, and they never parade their perverted sexuality and inferior genome on my desk at office parties."
"I'm reconsidering killing you," Sunday mused. "I could just tell people the Deathbots did it."
"No one else will hire you," Shrimmer said smugly. "You're black-listed in every major news corporation in the entire system. Heh. 'Black'-listed. As for the Deathbots--" He frowned. "Wait, why haven't you been shot yet?"
"Incoming priority communication on our headnet," said the head Deathbot. "We apologise for the inconvenience. Slaughter shall commence as soon as possible."
Sunday grinned. "That would be TerraMax CEO Leon DeShelby calling you up to tell you to lay down your weapons, I believe."
"Actually," said the Deathbot, "that would be TerraMax CEO Leon DeShelby calling us up to say 'To Sheol with the news; shoot the bitch anyway.'"
"Oh," said Sunday. "Bugger!"
She threw herself behind the desk as guns boomed, leaving rippling distortions in the holo-screens and rather more physical holes in the walls, shredding the windows too. They should have shredded Shrimmer, except he'd somehow erected a personal force-shield and was now happily ensconced in a shimmering, translucent, vaguely blue sphere that wobbled around with each impact.
"Since when could you do that?!" Sunday yelled. "Wait, bugger that! Let me in!"
"Now would be a good time to renegotiate your contract, don't you think?"
"No, I don't bloody think!"
"Yes," Shrimmer nodded. "I've often believed that was the case."
"Are you dead yet?" asked the head Deathbot.
"Yes!" she called back.
"She's lying," said Shrimmer. "Fire some more!"
They did. The desk happily exploded, debris blasting in every direction and missing Sunday only because she'd dodged around and put Shrimmer's sphere between her and the Deathbots.
"Oi!" he complained. "That's cheating."
"There she is," said one of the Deathbots, and they all started firing; Shrimmer's field, being in the way -- and really, for assassin droids, they weren't very smart at all -- took the brunt of the impact, sending him floating into Sunday.
"You move," she said, beginning to smirk. "When you're hit. You move."
"Uh," said Shrimmer. "N-now, Sunday, let's not be hasty--"
"No," said Sunday, "I think you'll find now is a very good time to be hasty indeed."
"I really must protest--"
"Yes," interrupted the head Deathbot. "We protest too. Stop hiding behind the fat bastard in the floaty shield char thing and come out here where we can shoot you dead. It won't be all that excruciating, honest."
"Okay," said Sunday.
"What?" said Shrimmer.
"Really?" asked the head Deathbot.
"But you have to line up first," Sunday said. "You know. Like a proper firing squad. If I'm going to be executed, I'd like to go with the classics."
"Why are you listening to her?" Shrimmer complained, trying to float out of the way and bouncing off the remains of the desk instead.
"They really aren't very smart," Sunday mused. "Probably designed that way to stop them turning on their creator."
"High quality AI is incredibly expensive," the head Deathbot informed them. "Is this a good enough line for you, Ms Jones?"
"You know," said Sunday, pulling her gloves on, "I think I just might be."
Lunging forward, she slapped both hands against Shrimmer's force-bubble and shoved hard. Even through the gloves it stung, and Sunday grit her teeth as she pushed, rapidly building up speed.
"Sunday!" screamed Shrimmer.
"That's my name," she agreed, as the bubble smashed into the first of the Deathbots without slowing.
"Erk," managed the head Deathbot as its first compatriot smacked into it and its second promptly panicked and opened fire, right at him. "Stop! Stop! St--"
It crunched into the third Deathbot. Still not stopping, the three of them pinned to its side, Shrimmer's bubble kept going, straight for the jagged hole where a window had once been.
"I do believe this is where you get off," Sunday said, giving the bubble one last shove for luck.
"No, no, no!" Shrimmer wailed, frantically smacking at buttons.
"Ohhh, yes," Sunday crowed. "Also, when I write this up, I'm going to think of something better than that 'get off' line."
The pinned Deathbots were rather too busy going out of the hole to respond. Shrimmer probably hadn't heard her over his stream of expletives. As the chair toppled over and out, he managed to get the shield down and fling himself out of it, slapping heavily onto the windowsill, outstretched hands scrabbling at the carpet inside.
Sunday wandered over to his side and leaned out to look down. The Deathbots rapidly shrank to dots as they fell away until she couldn't see them at all.
"Wait for it," she drawled.
Light exploded, then a rush of thunder that knocked the remaining shards of glass from the window. Smoke began to rise towards them.
"Does it make me a complete sociopath that I enjoyed that?" Sunday asked.
"H-help," wheezed Shrimmer. "Help me up!"
"You have to be amazed at the structural strength of these buildings," Sunday mused, ignoring this. "We didn't even shake! I wonder if there's a story in that. Oh, well, someone else can write it. I think I'll take a holiday."
"No pay," growled Shrimmer.
"Not encouraging," Sunday said, casually standing on his fingers. "Oops."
"Bitch!"
"Misogynistic insults?" She pressed down with her foot, leaning to put her whole weight on it. Shrimmer bellowed. "What was that?"
"F-fine! Expense account, five days!"
"Two weeks," Sunday corrected.
"I'd rather die," Shrimmer said.
Sunday rolled her eyes. "Ten days, then."
He eyed her for a long moment before growling "Done!" out through grit teeth. At her prompting look, he gave the required instructions to the computer as well.
"And no take backs," Sunday added.
"Permanent Authorisation!" Shrimmer yelled. "Now pull me up!"
"To be honest, I would have pulled you up even if you hadn't agreed," Sunday admitted, grabbing his arms and dragging him in.
"Knew you couldn't. Resist the. Shrimmer charm," he panted as he kicked and pushed himself up.
"Mostly I was worried about the people your landing would kill," Sunday said, falling back into the office with him, puffing. "Damn but you need to diet! There's a line between fat and healthy and really damn obese, and you're on the wrong side of it."
"Time for your holiday, Sunday," said Shrimmer, pulling a pulse-pistol out of -- well, she really didn't like to think. "Your holiday from life!"
"Back in ten days," Sunday crowed, and threw herself through the office door while plasma blazed around her.
~
Brash sunlight blazed off the gleaming, twisting spires of Metrolan city, burst on a billion windows and fell away into the canyons between buildings in great golden rays that splashed across the transit tubes and rained through the safety mesh to dapple the motor jammed streets far, far below. Tourists gaped in wonder at the exquisite marvel of precision-engineered architecture while the locals generally grumbled, barged past them, and, on occasion, stole their bags and wallets.
"Nice try," said Sunday, twisting the girl's wrist a little harder and catching her phone when the girl dropped it. "Your shadow gave your approach away, though, and speeding up as soon as you've grabbed? Blatant tell. You gotta keep it smooth."
The girl nodded, wide-eyed, braids clacking. Sunday let her go and she vanished into the crowds streaming out of the shuttle-port. Pushing through them, Sunday mounted the steps under the gleaming silver half-moon hologram and glanced back in time to watch the girl blatantly steal a tourist's camera. Sunday sighed. There was just no teaching some people.
There were queues at all the departure desks. Bright company logos hung above each one -- a green rocket here, a red swipe there -- but shuttle companies got bought and sold so fast Sunday had no idea which logo was for which destinations. Finally, she picked one at random on the principle that if she didn't like wherever she ended up, she could just do the same the other end as well.
Bored of reading the slow train of passing adboards, Sunday started people watching as she shuffled ever so slowly closer to the desk. Most of the people around her were white-collar workers getting commuter flights. Some were clearly tourists on their rounds; others, like Sunday, heading away for a vacation. A few, well dressed and exquisitely fashionable, she couldn't place at all: secret agents, perhaps, assassins, bodyguards, possibly even celebrities not yet rich enough for their own shuttles.
(Sunday really, really wanted a private shuttle.)
The well-dressed man at the front of the next queue along leaned over the counter to flirt with the salesdroid and Sunday suddenly realised she was looking at the stately Eurasian features of TerraMax executive Brent Clifford, formally of Yueng Province, lately of Metrolan, and go to "Do It" man for TerraMax CEO Leon DeShelby. He was buying a travel pass for the Saritris shuttle.
Big company crisis, courtesy of yours truly, she mused, and suddenly a head honcho buggers off to nowhere? That's a man either deeply in denial or up to something-- no. You are on holiday, she told herself. You are going to take a break.
In Actiba, apparently, she discovered as she finally reached her own counter. "Never heard of it," she told the salesdroid. "One, please."
"The waste from the Faux-Pho Factory turns the local beaches phosphorescent," it told her, comparing her bioscan to her account. "I'm told it's quite lovely at night."
"Huh." Sunday considered this, and then shrugged, accepting her travel pass. "Pretty pollution, worth a look-see. Cheers."
Still, as she turned away, she couldn't help noticing Brent Clifford swaggering off through the departure gate like a man on a mission.
Holiday or sneak, holiday or sneak...
"I do have ten days," Sunday mused, getting a blank look from the woman currently buying a Saritris pass. "Of holiday," she clarified. "So I could -- I have no idea why I'm talking to you, sorry."
"It gets us all like that," the woman agreed. "Say, aren't you Sunday Jones? I love your work -- oh, could I have your autograph? To Mary-Beth?"
"Thank you," said Sunday, smiling and producing a pen. "May I?" She took the woman's travel documents, and scrawled her name in glittering letters across the Metrolan Station logo. "Have a lovely trip!"
She handed the documents back and strode away before the woman could finish admiring the signature, or notice that Sunday had just swapped their travel passes. With the help of her ever-trusty scan scrambler necklace, she flashed the pass at the inspector and dodged through the checkpoint, reaching the shuttle in time to see, through the window, Brent Clifford taking his seat. She followed him in, handing her bag to baggage droid on the entrance ramp, absently re-buckling the strap that had come loose at some point on the way. Some of those expenses were definitely going on luggage that hadn't been following her around the world since her student days.
Despite the size of the shuttle itself, the passenger compartment was small; corporate cargo (and engines and whatnot) took up much of the space. Sunday quickly scanned the room, looking for the best seat. Besides Brent and herself, there were a half dozen other people: a blond-haired, blue-eyed, lightly-tanned muscle man with a craggy face; a bland, oval faced woman, gold circuitry stamped on her ebony skin; an athletic, sharply dressed, elegantly sprawled, hazel-eyed, fair-skinned, ruby lipped brunette, who met Sunday's gaze with an amused, almost flirtatious smirk; a pair of Asian men, the larger of the two sat in the middle of the compartment, as far away from any windows and doors as possible, tight-gripping his arm-rests, while the smaller sighed and patted his arm; and an elderly, pleasantly plump, grey-haired and pink cheeked woman, knitting happily. She cheerfully waved Sunday at the empty seat next to her, which Sunday took as the departure lights began to flash.
The steward, a bottle-blonde French-Italian who introduced herself as Belle, reminded them that personal comm systems should be switched off, and made sure everybody was secure in their restraint fields. Sunday twisted against hers so she could look out of the window as the engines hum get louder and deeper until, to a thunderous bass accompaniment, the shuttle launched. The station dwindled in seconds, the city already notably receding, spires shrinking into view. In less than a minute they were over farms, then scrub land, then even that gave away to long rippled sweep of the desert. The engine noise faded away, the cabin lights came back up and, with a pleasant charm, the restraint fields disengaged. Sunday watched the little man carefully peel his frightened friend's sweaty fingers away from the armrests.
"Poor boy," said the old woman. "I get like that on boats," she confided, leaning in towards Sunday conspiratorially, knitting needles flying. "All that bobbing up and down does a number on my stomach."
"As long as flying doesn't do a number on his, I think we're okay," Sunday said, watching Brent Clifford. The old woman chuckled. Brent Clifford smoothed out the lines of his suit before calling Belle over for a quiet chat. The angle meant she couldn't see their lips, though she could hear Belle giggle.
"I hope you don't mind me saying," the old woman said, "but you have lovely skin. Are you Indig?"
"Polynai," Sunday corrected automatically, watching Belle retreat with flushed cheeks.
"Oh! An island girl! How lovely. I'm from Wells, myself. Evelyn," she added, offering Sunday her hand.
Sunday gave her name, turning back to shake Evelyn's hand. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Brent Clifford look around casually, and then get up, sauntering towards the back of the shuttle.
"Oh, you're the reporter!" Evelyn beamed. "That show you did about the textile industry really opened my eyes. I try to knit my own clothes. I made this cardigan."
"Seriously?" said Sunday before she could stop herself.
Evelyn just laughed. "I know; terrible, isn't it? I've gotten better since then. It's all in the needles."
Sunday shifted in her seat, trying to see where Brent Clifford was going without being obvious about it, but he'd already vanished from sight.
"Uncomfortable, aren't they?" Evelyn said sympathetically.
Sunday frowned at her. "Cardigans?"
"The seats, my dear!" Evelyn patted her own.
"Oh, yes," Sunday said vaguely, and then, having an idea, "Perhaps I'll just stretch my legs for a bit."
"Good idea," Evelyn said, voice muffled as she leaned over to dig another handful of needles of various lengths and thicknesses out of her bag. "Good for the circulation!" Metal and plastic rattled. "My doctor always says -- oh, dear, where did I put it?"
Sunday took advantage of the distraction to slip away before she had to sit through medical drama. It would have been too obvious to go straight back after Brent Clifford, but she knew most shuttles followed the same basic design. Slipping out the front as if she had all the permission in the world, she strode casually through the staff area, all prepared to bedazzle the steward and somewhat disappointed when Belle proved not to be around.
Ducking down into the hold, she hurried across to the far ladder (having a quick nose in the middle to see what the cargo was -- very well sealed in, damn it! -- and check her bag was secured), climbing back to the deck.
The engaged sign was lit up, as expected. She tried the door handle anyway, just to see and found it locked, also as expected. There was no response to the rattle. She pressed her ear to the door, listening, but she couldn't hear anything. Taking a step back, she considered the door for a long moment, and then tried knocking on it. Still nothing.
What did she know about Brent Clifford? Not much all told. She dug her phone out, checking there were no stewards around to complain about her potentially causing the shuttle to crash, and tried to open a datalink. Her phone happily ignored every tap on its screen. Being right over the middle of the desert in a big metal can probably didn't help with getting signals.
"Hello," she tried, knocking on the door again. She attempted the steward's accent, throwing in a little giggle for good measure. "It's Belle, Mister Clifford. Would you like a helping hand in there?"
There was still no response. What a waste of cheap innuendo!
Sunday hovered in the corridor for a moment, but since there was no sign he was coming out any time soon so she could ambush him for a private interview, she decided to return to the passenger compartment and ambush him for a public interview instead. It wouldn't be as good, of course, but it would do.
She climbed back down the ladder into the hold but no sooner had she taken a step away than there came a resounding crash from above. Swearing, she darted back, climbing as fast as possible.
The first thing she saw was the gorgeous brunette from before, half caught in the connecting curtain between compartments, her hands up kung-fu style. Sunday had a brief moment to wonder if the woman's nails had always been that long and deadly looking, when she noticed that the bathroom door was open and that Brent Clifford's quite clearly dead body was lying at her feet, his eyes wide, blood trickling from his ear.
"What did you do?" they both asked.
"I didn't do anything," they both complained.
They stared at each other.
"...you should check he's dead," the brunette said.
"Why don't you check?" Sunday countered.
"You're closer," she said, moving in, letting the curtain drop back.
"We're both right here," Sunday pointed out. "Anyway, he's quite clearly dead. I'd say he's been stabbed."
"In the ear," the brunette agreed. "You're Sunday Jones, aren't you? I've seen your broadcasts."
There were, Sunday mused, down sides to being famous. "Who are you? Thinking of you as 'the brunette' is annoying my internal editor."
"You can call me Baby," she said.
Sunday stared. Before she could think of anything to say to that, they were interrupted by Belle, who had barely opened the curtain before she let out an ear-piercing scream and promptly burst into tears.
"What is it?" someone called, and there were other voices too, demanding explanations.
Sunday stuck her head out. "Nothing to worry about! Just a loose white-trailed scorpion, got out of the hold, gave Belle here a bit of a scare."
"Are you sure, dear?" Evelyn asked.
"Yes, yes; everything will be fine. Just stay in your seats," she ordered, and ducked back, yanking the curtain shut again, ignoring calls of "Aren't they poisonous?"
"Incredibly poisonous," said Baby.
"Isn't that red-tailed?" Sunday asked. Baby shook her head. "Oh. Well, better they're worried about that than there being a murderer on board."
"Muh-maybe he, he, he--" Belle took a shuddering breath and stood up straighter. "Maybe he had a stroke or something? Do either of you have medical training?"
"Field training," Baby said from where she was kneeling by the body. "Something definitely went in here."
Her nails looked perfectly normal from this angle, Sunday noticed absently; normal, shapely, and exquisitely painted with some delicate opalescent liquid. She really had very nice hands all told. Which was completely irrelevant. Right.
"Perhaps he did it to himself," Belle offered. "An accident or, well. You know." She lowered her voice to a whisper. "Suicide."
Sunday stepped over the body to give the bathroom a look around. Nothing seemed particularly out of place or usefully covered in blood. There was a small, scratched, ventilation grille, something she could have gotten her hand into, but certainly not a whole person. The door locked from the inside; still, Sunday supposed it was probable staff (and therefore anyone with the right equipment) could over-ride it from the outside.
"If he did," Baby mused, "the murder weapon would still be in his ear."
"Or in the bathroom," Sunday agreed.
"So whoever killed him took it away," Baby added, looking pointedly at Sunday.
"You were right there, too," Sunday snapped. "Anyway, he could have been killed as soon as he went in, and it just took this long for the body to fall out." Baby gave her a sceptical look. "Well, it could have!"
Belle made a little whining noise. "How could this be happening? I, I, I-- Okay, procedure, procedure says, um."
"Tell the pilot," Sunday suggested.
"Right," she nodded, turning back to the curtain. "Oh, god, I can't go through there. They'll all ask--"
"Go through the hold," Sunday said, taking her arm and guiding her to the ladder. "Baby will stay with the body."
To keep it safe from you, Baby's look said. To clear up the forensic leftovers, Sunday's look said right back. 'I'm watching you', their matching stares announced.
"Right," said Belle again. Sunday carefully manoeuvred her around until she finally started down the ladder under her own steam.
"Stay there," Sunday said to Baby and dodged through the curtain before she could reply. She stopped immediately on the other side and peeked a quick look back through. Baby was looking right at her. Sunday flashed a grin just to be annoying and pulled the curtain closed again.
Luckily, the other passengers all seemed to be distracted calming down the incredibly nervous man, which gave Sunday a chance to pull her phone out. Unluckily, she had exactly as much signal as before. When she looked up again, it was to find Evelyn watching her. Sunday quickly hid the phone. Evelyn just winked.
Stepping back through the curtain, she caught Baby going through Brent Clifford's pockets.
"Hey!" Sunday complained, mostly because she wished she'd thought of it first. "Stop that!"
"Worried about what I'll find?" Baby asked.
"Worried about what," Sunday started and there was a loud explosion from the hold, something rippled through them, and then suddenly the floor yanked her off her feet as the dead ship plummeted towards the desert. She caught a glimpse of Baby's startled, egregiously pretty face, and then her own was smacked into a wall, and everything went dark.
Which was a shame because she was sure the crash would have made a great headline.
~
Head pounding like a Freddy Utopia concert (never again), Sunday swore (quietly because, ow) as she pushed herself up onto her hands and knees. The shuttle shifted around her and it took her a couple of minutes to work out this was less to do with concussion and more to do with how it was actually moving, rocking each time a passenger dropped down the emergency slide now sticking out where the window had been. Clambering all the way up to her feet, Sunday tried the controls for the proper exit, which just clicked uselessly, swore again, and made her way through the surprisingly untouched looking passenger compartment to follow them down.
"Okay, let's check," Belle was saying, reading from a clipboard. "Mister Stone?" The craggy faced man grunted. Belle ticked her page with a cheerful flick of her steel pen. "Check. Miss--"
"Call me Baby," Baby said.
"Mister Zheng?" The nervous man was on his knees kissing the ground joyfully. "I'll take that as a yes. Mister Kim?" The little man waved from where he was helping Evelyn find a rock to sit on. "Thank you. And Ms King, too. Excellent. Artisan Caffrey?"
"I expect due compensation," the circuit-encrusted woman said sharply.
"I'm sure something will be worked out," Belle said smoothly. "That just leaves Mrs Galhoun? Mrs Galhoun? Mary-Beth Galhoun?"
"Oh, right," said Sunday, realising. "That would be me." The others stared at her. "I'm travelling incognito. It's a thing. That I do. What about the crew?"
"I'm afraid our pilot didn't make it," Belle said in far too cheerful a voice. Her pupils were blown, a clear sign of the pharmaceutical calming agents being pumped into her by the emergency implants in her hypothalamus, which was standard in these sorts of jobs.
(When Sunday got her own shuttle, she would definitely get a magic calming drug thing in her brain too.)
"What about the other guy?" Stone asked. "Went to the bathroom. Nice suit, ugly shoes."
"He died," Sunday said. "In the crash. It's very tragic."
"Oh, I'm sure he was dead before the crash," Belle said cheerfully.
Sunday and Baby both sighed, as the other passengers all started asking questions.
"We're stuck in the bloody desert!" Sunday bellowed over them.
There was a sudden quiet, punctuated only by the sounds of shifting, cooling metal. The shuttle listed sideways very, very slowly. Breeze stirred sand tumbled into the mile long, debris splattered gouge pointing back at Metrolan.
"Not being stuck in the desert is where we should start," Sunday said.
"I concur," Baby said.
"You 'concur'?" Sunday scoffed.
"It's a perfectly acceptable word," Baby complained. "You used 'actually' sixteen times in less than a dozen sentences in your TerraMax report."
"I was editing on the fly!" Sunday complained.
"And now a major TerraMax employee is dead," Baby concluded.
"Artless prose is the greatest murderer of them all," Caffrey said.
"Perhaps we could call for assistance?" Evelyn asked.
"The ship's comms broke in the crash," Belle said brightly. "We're all doomed!"
"What about Sunday's phone?" Evelyn asked, waving her knitting at Sunday. "You were using it just before the crash."
Everybody turned to look at Sunday.
"You killed a man and you crashed a shuttle by using your phone in transit?" Caffrey asked in a dangerous tone.
"That's just cold," Stone said, shaking his head.
"The crash wasn't my phone's fault!"
"There's a point zero eight five percent chance it was your phone that returned us to blessed, blessed earth," Zheng informed them from where he was lying spread-eagled, smiling beatifically at the sky.
"I had no signal," Sunday complained, taking out her phone. "I still don't. Because we're actually in the middle of the desert. Which we should be getting out of."
"I'm not going anywhere in the company of this woman," Caffrey announced. "She is clearly a threat to us all."
"Would you be carrying anything long and sharp?" Baby asked her. "A phone stylus, perhaps, or a steel-tipped pen?"
"No," Sunday lied.
"Like that one we can all see right there?" Stone said, pointing at the pen she'd inconveniently left on show from signing her autograph. Fame had serious drawbacks.
"We'll just have to leave her behind," Belle said, smiling at them all.
"Now, wait a," Sunday started, and then something jabbed her in the neck; she had a moment to half-turn, to see an apologetic looking Mister Kim standing behind her, and then everything went dark again.
[ Full Headers and Art | Part One | Part Two | Read on DW ]
SUNDAY @CTION
"Stop the presses," bellowed Sunday as she crashed through a fortieth-story window into the @ction! headquarters, her burning skimmer shooting right through the holologo proclaiming them to be the world's most trust-worthy news-media conglomeration and into the six times life-size statue of Bogle Shrimmer, current Editor-in-Chief. While her erstwhile co-workers generally screamed, cursed, and ran around trying to avoid the ensuing rain of debris, Sunday jumped from desk to desk (and occasionally head to head) to reach the doors to the EiC's office and kicked them in. "Stop the presses!"
"We don't have presses, Sunday," Shrimmer said without looking up from the sextuple-screen holo-station.
"I know, but 'arrange a simultaneous breaking-news slot in all the feeds' doesn't have quite the right ring to it, and why mess with the classics, eh? Now," said Sunday, digging in her cleavage for the data-crystals, "get your ass out, would you? There's a fleet of extremely pissed off Yrgian Deathbots on my tail and if they get here before the push, we're all extremely buggered. And not in the good way."
Shrimmer sighed. "Sunday," he said, rolling back in his suspension chair, moustaches quivering. "You know I admire you, but, really--"
"What? Don't be daft," Sunday laughed, shoving her way into the gap and stabbing at buttons. "You're a misogynistic racist bigot and you'd happily see me butchered by Hate Drones if it didn't affect your bottom line. Now, shut up and shove off while I make you another fortune."
"Who are we going to get sued by this time?"
"You can watch the news, same as all the other schlubs." Sunday pounded the crystal into the data-port. "Of course, since you haven't upgraded your systems since the bloody Tortall regime, you might just have the pleasure of watching me die horribly just before you also die horribly. Unlike you, Yrgian Deathbots don't discriminate even--"
There was another explosion from outside and yet more screaming.
"Shit," said Sunday with feeling.
"Perhaps if you'd stop blowing up my offices, the insurance premiums would go down and I might actually be able to pay you more," Shrimmer suggested dryly.
Sunday frowned at him sceptically. "You? Pay me more?"
"Well, I might think about it a bit, at least," Shrimmer said with an air of affront.
Clanking and gleaming, three Yrgian Deathbots barged into the room. They were squat little things but what they lacked in height they made up in the weapons that bristled from every surface, making them look rather oddly like metallic hedgehogs. Nestled behind the deadly array, numerous optics glinted.
Shrimmer pointed at Sunday. "There's the dyke bitch. Shoot her."
"If you actually had balls, I would punch you right in them," Sunday said. "Except you'd probably enjoy it."
"I should suggest that to Mistress Bob," Shrimmer mused.
"Excuse me," said the squattest and most armed of the Deathbots in a warm, cultured voice. "I don't mean to hurry your flirting--" It raised his voice over their spluttered protests. "--but we do have some killing to be done, so if you wouldn't mind just telling us where the goods are so we don't have to blow this entire building up? There's a good fellows."
"You could do that," Sunday admitted, "but--"
"No they bloody can't," Shrimmer snapped. "Do you have any idea the overheads--"
"Shut up!"
"You shut up!"
"Perhaps you could both be quiet?" offered the Deathbot, while the others rattled their weapons in what was possibly agreement, possibly a threat, or possibly just boredom. "Its nothing personal, you understand; we just get paid more if we kill you before the, uh, deadline." It chuckled a little. "Oh, dear. 'Deadline'. Sorry about that."
"Might I say something?" Sunday asked.
"Is it the location of the data crystals?" the Deathbot asked.
"It's certainly related," Sunday allowed, darting forward to grab a remote off the desk. She let out a triumphant "Hah!" while waving it at them.
There was a confused hum. Optics clicked opened and closed. The head Deathbot asked, rather dubiously, "Is that a weapon?"
"The best weapon there is," Sunday said, pressing the button. "The Truth."
Holoscreens blazed into life all around them, not just the six work screens over the desk, but along every wall as well, and even the ceiling. From all of them, Sunday looked back, her dark eyes sparkling with star reporter fervour. Admittedly, her thick and currently red curls were looking rather better coiffed, and her gold eye-shadow had been tweaked up a few shades for better contrast with the rich brown of her, admittedly, airbrushed skin, but everyone did post-production work. There was nothing wrong with that.
"Did you make yourself thinner?" Shrimmer asked.
"No!" Sunday glared at him, indignant. "Shut up and listen!"
"--can exclusively reveal irrefutably evidence of the TerraMax corporation's shady business practices, ranging from the merely unethical, through the absolutely illegal, to the dangerous and potentially globally catastrophic. Long championed as the front-runner of the terraforming trade, reclaiming and reinvigorating otherwise worthless land, TerraMax has traded on a reputation of fair prices and ethical actions, but, here at Action!, we can exclusively reveal a long and sordid history of fraud and essentially fatal cost-cutting--"
"To be fair," Sunday said, lowering the volume on herself, "I had to edit that on the fly while under hot pursuit. I'm usually much more eloquent."
"Really?" said Shrimmer with apparently genuine surprise.
Sunday glared. "Why haven't I killed you yet?"
"I pay you," Shrimmer pointed out.
"Good point. Anyway, that's live. On every feed, right now, blasting out across the airwaves and the networks, into a billion hands, ears and eyes. And look--" She clicked the button again, turning the data overlay on. "That would be TerraMax's stock taking a massive hit. Or 'TerrorMax', perhaps?"
She grinned at them. They all stared blankly back.
"No? No."
"Bugger their stock," Shrimmer said, making grabby hands for the remote, which Sunday quickly held up out of his reach. "How are our viewing figures? Are we getting clicks? What's the ad revenue?"
"Is money all you care about?" Sunday asked. "No, really, I'm actually asking."
"I like my fish," Shrimmer said. "They don't talk back, and they never parade their perverted sexuality and inferior genome on my desk at office parties."
"I'm reconsidering killing you," Sunday mused. "I could just tell people the Deathbots did it."
"No one else will hire you," Shrimmer said smugly. "You're black-listed in every major news corporation in the entire system. Heh. 'Black'-listed. As for the Deathbots--" He frowned. "Wait, why haven't you been shot yet?"
"Incoming priority communication on our headnet," said the head Deathbot. "We apologise for the inconvenience. Slaughter shall commence as soon as possible."
Sunday grinned. "That would be TerraMax CEO Leon DeShelby calling you up to tell you to lay down your weapons, I believe."
"Actually," said the Deathbot, "that would be TerraMax CEO Leon DeShelby calling us up to say 'To Sheol with the news; shoot the bitch anyway.'"
"Oh," said Sunday. "Bugger!"
She threw herself behind the desk as guns boomed, leaving rippling distortions in the holo-screens and rather more physical holes in the walls, shredding the windows too. They should have shredded Shrimmer, except he'd somehow erected a personal force-shield and was now happily ensconced in a shimmering, translucent, vaguely blue sphere that wobbled around with each impact.
"Since when could you do that?!" Sunday yelled. "Wait, bugger that! Let me in!"
"Now would be a good time to renegotiate your contract, don't you think?"
"No, I don't bloody think!"
"Yes," Shrimmer nodded. "I've often believed that was the case."
"Are you dead yet?" asked the head Deathbot.
"Yes!" she called back.
"She's lying," said Shrimmer. "Fire some more!"
They did. The desk happily exploded, debris blasting in every direction and missing Sunday only because she'd dodged around and put Shrimmer's sphere between her and the Deathbots.
"Oi!" he complained. "That's cheating."
"There she is," said one of the Deathbots, and they all started firing; Shrimmer's field, being in the way -- and really, for assassin droids, they weren't very smart at all -- took the brunt of the impact, sending him floating into Sunday.
"You move," she said, beginning to smirk. "When you're hit. You move."
"Uh," said Shrimmer. "N-now, Sunday, let's not be hasty--"
"No," said Sunday, "I think you'll find now is a very good time to be hasty indeed."
"I really must protest--"
"Yes," interrupted the head Deathbot. "We protest too. Stop hiding behind the fat bastard in the floaty shield char thing and come out here where we can shoot you dead. It won't be all that excruciating, honest."
"Okay," said Sunday.
"What?" said Shrimmer.
"Really?" asked the head Deathbot.
"But you have to line up first," Sunday said. "You know. Like a proper firing squad. If I'm going to be executed, I'd like to go with the classics."
"Why are you listening to her?" Shrimmer complained, trying to float out of the way and bouncing off the remains of the desk instead.
"They really aren't very smart," Sunday mused. "Probably designed that way to stop them turning on their creator."
"High quality AI is incredibly expensive," the head Deathbot informed them. "Is this a good enough line for you, Ms Jones?"
"You know," said Sunday, pulling her gloves on, "I think I just might be."
Lunging forward, she slapped both hands against Shrimmer's force-bubble and shoved hard. Even through the gloves it stung, and Sunday grit her teeth as she pushed, rapidly building up speed.
"Sunday!" screamed Shrimmer.
"That's my name," she agreed, as the bubble smashed into the first of the Deathbots without slowing.
"Erk," managed the head Deathbot as its first compatriot smacked into it and its second promptly panicked and opened fire, right at him. "Stop! Stop! St--"
It crunched into the third Deathbot. Still not stopping, the three of them pinned to its side, Shrimmer's bubble kept going, straight for the jagged hole where a window had once been.
"I do believe this is where you get off," Sunday said, giving the bubble one last shove for luck.
"No, no, no!" Shrimmer wailed, frantically smacking at buttons.
"Ohhh, yes," Sunday crowed. "Also, when I write this up, I'm going to think of something better than that 'get off' line."
The pinned Deathbots were rather too busy going out of the hole to respond. Shrimmer probably hadn't heard her over his stream of expletives. As the chair toppled over and out, he managed to get the shield down and fling himself out of it, slapping heavily onto the windowsill, outstretched hands scrabbling at the carpet inside.
Sunday wandered over to his side and leaned out to look down. The Deathbots rapidly shrank to dots as they fell away until she couldn't see them at all.
"Wait for it," she drawled.
Light exploded, then a rush of thunder that knocked the remaining shards of glass from the window. Smoke began to rise towards them.
"Does it make me a complete sociopath that I enjoyed that?" Sunday asked.
"H-help," wheezed Shrimmer. "Help me up!"
"You have to be amazed at the structural strength of these buildings," Sunday mused, ignoring this. "We didn't even shake! I wonder if there's a story in that. Oh, well, someone else can write it. I think I'll take a holiday."
"No pay," growled Shrimmer.
"Not encouraging," Sunday said, casually standing on his fingers. "Oops."
"Bitch!"
"Misogynistic insults?" She pressed down with her foot, leaning to put her whole weight on it. Shrimmer bellowed. "What was that?"
"F-fine! Expense account, five days!"
"Two weeks," Sunday corrected.
"I'd rather die," Shrimmer said.
Sunday rolled her eyes. "Ten days, then."
He eyed her for a long moment before growling "Done!" out through grit teeth. At her prompting look, he gave the required instructions to the computer as well.
"And no take backs," Sunday added.
"Permanent Authorisation!" Shrimmer yelled. "Now pull me up!"
"To be honest, I would have pulled you up even if you hadn't agreed," Sunday admitted, grabbing his arms and dragging him in.
"Knew you couldn't. Resist the. Shrimmer charm," he panted as he kicked and pushed himself up.
"Mostly I was worried about the people your landing would kill," Sunday said, falling back into the office with him, puffing. "Damn but you need to diet! There's a line between fat and healthy and really damn obese, and you're on the wrong side of it."
"Time for your holiday, Sunday," said Shrimmer, pulling a pulse-pistol out of -- well, she really didn't like to think. "Your holiday from life!"
"Back in ten days," Sunday crowed, and threw herself through the office door while plasma blazed around her.
~
Brash sunlight blazed off the gleaming, twisting spires of Metrolan city, burst on a billion windows and fell away into the canyons between buildings in great golden rays that splashed across the transit tubes and rained through the safety mesh to dapple the motor jammed streets far, far below. Tourists gaped in wonder at the exquisite marvel of precision-engineered architecture while the locals generally grumbled, barged past them, and, on occasion, stole their bags and wallets.
"Nice try," said Sunday, twisting the girl's wrist a little harder and catching her phone when the girl dropped it. "Your shadow gave your approach away, though, and speeding up as soon as you've grabbed? Blatant tell. You gotta keep it smooth."
The girl nodded, wide-eyed, braids clacking. Sunday let her go and she vanished into the crowds streaming out of the shuttle-port. Pushing through them, Sunday mounted the steps under the gleaming silver half-moon hologram and glanced back in time to watch the girl blatantly steal a tourist's camera. Sunday sighed. There was just no teaching some people.
There were queues at all the departure desks. Bright company logos hung above each one -- a green rocket here, a red swipe there -- but shuttle companies got bought and sold so fast Sunday had no idea which logo was for which destinations. Finally, she picked one at random on the principle that if she didn't like wherever she ended up, she could just do the same the other end as well.
Bored of reading the slow train of passing adboards, Sunday started people watching as she shuffled ever so slowly closer to the desk. Most of the people around her were white-collar workers getting commuter flights. Some were clearly tourists on their rounds; others, like Sunday, heading away for a vacation. A few, well dressed and exquisitely fashionable, she couldn't place at all: secret agents, perhaps, assassins, bodyguards, possibly even celebrities not yet rich enough for their own shuttles.
(Sunday really, really wanted a private shuttle.)
The well-dressed man at the front of the next queue along leaned over the counter to flirt with the salesdroid and Sunday suddenly realised she was looking at the stately Eurasian features of TerraMax executive Brent Clifford, formally of Yueng Province, lately of Metrolan, and go to "Do It" man for TerraMax CEO Leon DeShelby. He was buying a travel pass for the Saritris shuttle.
Big company crisis, courtesy of yours truly, she mused, and suddenly a head honcho buggers off to nowhere? That's a man either deeply in denial or up to something-- no. You are on holiday, she told herself. You are going to take a break.
In Actiba, apparently, she discovered as she finally reached her own counter. "Never heard of it," she told the salesdroid. "One, please."
"The waste from the Faux-Pho Factory turns the local beaches phosphorescent," it told her, comparing her bioscan to her account. "I'm told it's quite lovely at night."
"Huh." Sunday considered this, and then shrugged, accepting her travel pass. "Pretty pollution, worth a look-see. Cheers."
Still, as she turned away, she couldn't help noticing Brent Clifford swaggering off through the departure gate like a man on a mission.
Holiday or sneak, holiday or sneak...
"I do have ten days," Sunday mused, getting a blank look from the woman currently buying a Saritris pass. "Of holiday," she clarified. "So I could -- I have no idea why I'm talking to you, sorry."
"It gets us all like that," the woman agreed. "Say, aren't you Sunday Jones? I love your work -- oh, could I have your autograph? To Mary-Beth?"
"Thank you," said Sunday, smiling and producing a pen. "May I?" She took the woman's travel documents, and scrawled her name in glittering letters across the Metrolan Station logo. "Have a lovely trip!"
She handed the documents back and strode away before the woman could finish admiring the signature, or notice that Sunday had just swapped their travel passes. With the help of her ever-trusty scan scrambler necklace, she flashed the pass at the inspector and dodged through the checkpoint, reaching the shuttle in time to see, through the window, Brent Clifford taking his seat. She followed him in, handing her bag to baggage droid on the entrance ramp, absently re-buckling the strap that had come loose at some point on the way. Some of those expenses were definitely going on luggage that hadn't been following her around the world since her student days.
Despite the size of the shuttle itself, the passenger compartment was small; corporate cargo (and engines and whatnot) took up much of the space. Sunday quickly scanned the room, looking for the best seat. Besides Brent and herself, there were a half dozen other people: a blond-haired, blue-eyed, lightly-tanned muscle man with a craggy face; a bland, oval faced woman, gold circuitry stamped on her ebony skin; an athletic, sharply dressed, elegantly sprawled, hazel-eyed, fair-skinned, ruby lipped brunette, who met Sunday's gaze with an amused, almost flirtatious smirk; a pair of Asian men, the larger of the two sat in the middle of the compartment, as far away from any windows and doors as possible, tight-gripping his arm-rests, while the smaller sighed and patted his arm; and an elderly, pleasantly plump, grey-haired and pink cheeked woman, knitting happily. She cheerfully waved Sunday at the empty seat next to her, which Sunday took as the departure lights began to flash.
The steward, a bottle-blonde French-Italian who introduced herself as Belle, reminded them that personal comm systems should be switched off, and made sure everybody was secure in their restraint fields. Sunday twisted against hers so she could look out of the window as the engines hum get louder and deeper until, to a thunderous bass accompaniment, the shuttle launched. The station dwindled in seconds, the city already notably receding, spires shrinking into view. In less than a minute they were over farms, then scrub land, then even that gave away to long rippled sweep of the desert. The engine noise faded away, the cabin lights came back up and, with a pleasant charm, the restraint fields disengaged. Sunday watched the little man carefully peel his frightened friend's sweaty fingers away from the armrests.
"Poor boy," said the old woman. "I get like that on boats," she confided, leaning in towards Sunday conspiratorially, knitting needles flying. "All that bobbing up and down does a number on my stomach."
"As long as flying doesn't do a number on his, I think we're okay," Sunday said, watching Brent Clifford. The old woman chuckled. Brent Clifford smoothed out the lines of his suit before calling Belle over for a quiet chat. The angle meant she couldn't see their lips, though she could hear Belle giggle.
"I hope you don't mind me saying," the old woman said, "but you have lovely skin. Are you Indig?"
"Polynai," Sunday corrected automatically, watching Belle retreat with flushed cheeks.
"Oh! An island girl! How lovely. I'm from Wells, myself. Evelyn," she added, offering Sunday her hand.
Sunday gave her name, turning back to shake Evelyn's hand. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Brent Clifford look around casually, and then get up, sauntering towards the back of the shuttle.
"Oh, you're the reporter!" Evelyn beamed. "That show you did about the textile industry really opened my eyes. I try to knit my own clothes. I made this cardigan."
"Seriously?" said Sunday before she could stop herself.
Evelyn just laughed. "I know; terrible, isn't it? I've gotten better since then. It's all in the needles."
Sunday shifted in her seat, trying to see where Brent Clifford was going without being obvious about it, but he'd already vanished from sight.
"Uncomfortable, aren't they?" Evelyn said sympathetically.
Sunday frowned at her. "Cardigans?"
"The seats, my dear!" Evelyn patted her own.
"Oh, yes," Sunday said vaguely, and then, having an idea, "Perhaps I'll just stretch my legs for a bit."
"Good idea," Evelyn said, voice muffled as she leaned over to dig another handful of needles of various lengths and thicknesses out of her bag. "Good for the circulation!" Metal and plastic rattled. "My doctor always says -- oh, dear, where did I put it?"
Sunday took advantage of the distraction to slip away before she had to sit through medical drama. It would have been too obvious to go straight back after Brent Clifford, but she knew most shuttles followed the same basic design. Slipping out the front as if she had all the permission in the world, she strode casually through the staff area, all prepared to bedazzle the steward and somewhat disappointed when Belle proved not to be around.
Ducking down into the hold, she hurried across to the far ladder (having a quick nose in the middle to see what the cargo was -- very well sealed in, damn it! -- and check her bag was secured), climbing back to the deck.
The engaged sign was lit up, as expected. She tried the door handle anyway, just to see and found it locked, also as expected. There was no response to the rattle. She pressed her ear to the door, listening, but she couldn't hear anything. Taking a step back, she considered the door for a long moment, and then tried knocking on it. Still nothing.
What did she know about Brent Clifford? Not much all told. She dug her phone out, checking there were no stewards around to complain about her potentially causing the shuttle to crash, and tried to open a datalink. Her phone happily ignored every tap on its screen. Being right over the middle of the desert in a big metal can probably didn't help with getting signals.
"Hello," she tried, knocking on the door again. She attempted the steward's accent, throwing in a little giggle for good measure. "It's Belle, Mister Clifford. Would you like a helping hand in there?"
There was still no response. What a waste of cheap innuendo!
Sunday hovered in the corridor for a moment, but since there was no sign he was coming out any time soon so she could ambush him for a private interview, she decided to return to the passenger compartment and ambush him for a public interview instead. It wouldn't be as good, of course, but it would do.
She climbed back down the ladder into the hold but no sooner had she taken a step away than there came a resounding crash from above. Swearing, she darted back, climbing as fast as possible.
The first thing she saw was the gorgeous brunette from before, half caught in the connecting curtain between compartments, her hands up kung-fu style. Sunday had a brief moment to wonder if the woman's nails had always been that long and deadly looking, when she noticed that the bathroom door was open and that Brent Clifford's quite clearly dead body was lying at her feet, his eyes wide, blood trickling from his ear.
"What did you do?" they both asked.
"I didn't do anything," they both complained.
They stared at each other.
"...you should check he's dead," the brunette said.
"Why don't you check?" Sunday countered.
"You're closer," she said, moving in, letting the curtain drop back.
"We're both right here," Sunday pointed out. "Anyway, he's quite clearly dead. I'd say he's been stabbed."
"In the ear," the brunette agreed. "You're Sunday Jones, aren't you? I've seen your broadcasts."
There were, Sunday mused, down sides to being famous. "Who are you? Thinking of you as 'the brunette' is annoying my internal editor."
"You can call me Baby," she said.
Sunday stared. Before she could think of anything to say to that, they were interrupted by Belle, who had barely opened the curtain before she let out an ear-piercing scream and promptly burst into tears.
"What is it?" someone called, and there were other voices too, demanding explanations.
Sunday stuck her head out. "Nothing to worry about! Just a loose white-trailed scorpion, got out of the hold, gave Belle here a bit of a scare."
"Are you sure, dear?" Evelyn asked.
"Yes, yes; everything will be fine. Just stay in your seats," she ordered, and ducked back, yanking the curtain shut again, ignoring calls of "Aren't they poisonous?"
"Incredibly poisonous," said Baby.
"Isn't that red-tailed?" Sunday asked. Baby shook her head. "Oh. Well, better they're worried about that than there being a murderer on board."
"Muh-maybe he, he, he--" Belle took a shuddering breath and stood up straighter. "Maybe he had a stroke or something? Do either of you have medical training?"
"Field training," Baby said from where she was kneeling by the body. "Something definitely went in here."
Her nails looked perfectly normal from this angle, Sunday noticed absently; normal, shapely, and exquisitely painted with some delicate opalescent liquid. She really had very nice hands all told. Which was completely irrelevant. Right.
"Perhaps he did it to himself," Belle offered. "An accident or, well. You know." She lowered her voice to a whisper. "Suicide."
Sunday stepped over the body to give the bathroom a look around. Nothing seemed particularly out of place or usefully covered in blood. There was a small, scratched, ventilation grille, something she could have gotten her hand into, but certainly not a whole person. The door locked from the inside; still, Sunday supposed it was probable staff (and therefore anyone with the right equipment) could over-ride it from the outside.
"If he did," Baby mused, "the murder weapon would still be in his ear."
"Or in the bathroom," Sunday agreed.
"So whoever killed him took it away," Baby added, looking pointedly at Sunday.
"You were right there, too," Sunday snapped. "Anyway, he could have been killed as soon as he went in, and it just took this long for the body to fall out." Baby gave her a sceptical look. "Well, it could have!"
Belle made a little whining noise. "How could this be happening? I, I, I-- Okay, procedure, procedure says, um."
"Tell the pilot," Sunday suggested.
"Right," she nodded, turning back to the curtain. "Oh, god, I can't go through there. They'll all ask--"
"Go through the hold," Sunday said, taking her arm and guiding her to the ladder. "Baby will stay with the body."
To keep it safe from you, Baby's look said. To clear up the forensic leftovers, Sunday's look said right back. 'I'm watching you', their matching stares announced.
"Right," said Belle again. Sunday carefully manoeuvred her around until she finally started down the ladder under her own steam.
"Stay there," Sunday said to Baby and dodged through the curtain before she could reply. She stopped immediately on the other side and peeked a quick look back through. Baby was looking right at her. Sunday flashed a grin just to be annoying and pulled the curtain closed again.
Luckily, the other passengers all seemed to be distracted calming down the incredibly nervous man, which gave Sunday a chance to pull her phone out. Unluckily, she had exactly as much signal as before. When she looked up again, it was to find Evelyn watching her. Sunday quickly hid the phone. Evelyn just winked.
Stepping back through the curtain, she caught Baby going through Brent Clifford's pockets.
"Hey!" Sunday complained, mostly because she wished she'd thought of it first. "Stop that!"
"Worried about what I'll find?" Baby asked.
"Worried about what," Sunday started and there was a loud explosion from the hold, something rippled through them, and then suddenly the floor yanked her off her feet as the dead ship plummeted towards the desert. She caught a glimpse of Baby's startled, egregiously pretty face, and then her own was smacked into a wall, and everything went dark.
Which was a shame because she was sure the crash would have made a great headline.
~
Head pounding like a Freddy Utopia concert (never again), Sunday swore (quietly because, ow) as she pushed herself up onto her hands and knees. The shuttle shifted around her and it took her a couple of minutes to work out this was less to do with concussion and more to do with how it was actually moving, rocking each time a passenger dropped down the emergency slide now sticking out where the window had been. Clambering all the way up to her feet, Sunday tried the controls for the proper exit, which just clicked uselessly, swore again, and made her way through the surprisingly untouched looking passenger compartment to follow them down.
"Okay, let's check," Belle was saying, reading from a clipboard. "Mister Stone?" The craggy faced man grunted. Belle ticked her page with a cheerful flick of her steel pen. "Check. Miss--"
"Call me Baby," Baby said.
"Mister Zheng?" The nervous man was on his knees kissing the ground joyfully. "I'll take that as a yes. Mister Kim?" The little man waved from where he was helping Evelyn find a rock to sit on. "Thank you. And Ms King, too. Excellent. Artisan Caffrey?"
"I expect due compensation," the circuit-encrusted woman said sharply.
"I'm sure something will be worked out," Belle said smoothly. "That just leaves Mrs Galhoun? Mrs Galhoun? Mary-Beth Galhoun?"
"Oh, right," said Sunday, realising. "That would be me." The others stared at her. "I'm travelling incognito. It's a thing. That I do. What about the crew?"
"I'm afraid our pilot didn't make it," Belle said in far too cheerful a voice. Her pupils were blown, a clear sign of the pharmaceutical calming agents being pumped into her by the emergency implants in her hypothalamus, which was standard in these sorts of jobs.
(When Sunday got her own shuttle, she would definitely get a magic calming drug thing in her brain too.)
"What about the other guy?" Stone asked. "Went to the bathroom. Nice suit, ugly shoes."
"He died," Sunday said. "In the crash. It's very tragic."
"Oh, I'm sure he was dead before the crash," Belle said cheerfully.
Sunday and Baby both sighed, as the other passengers all started asking questions.
"We're stuck in the bloody desert!" Sunday bellowed over them.
There was a sudden quiet, punctuated only by the sounds of shifting, cooling metal. The shuttle listed sideways very, very slowly. Breeze stirred sand tumbled into the mile long, debris splattered gouge pointing back at Metrolan.
"Not being stuck in the desert is where we should start," Sunday said.
"I concur," Baby said.
"You 'concur'?" Sunday scoffed.
"It's a perfectly acceptable word," Baby complained. "You used 'actually' sixteen times in less than a dozen sentences in your TerraMax report."
"I was editing on the fly!" Sunday complained.
"And now a major TerraMax employee is dead," Baby concluded.
"Artless prose is the greatest murderer of them all," Caffrey said.
"Perhaps we could call for assistance?" Evelyn asked.
"The ship's comms broke in the crash," Belle said brightly. "We're all doomed!"
"What about Sunday's phone?" Evelyn asked, waving her knitting at Sunday. "You were using it just before the crash."
Everybody turned to look at Sunday.
"You killed a man and you crashed a shuttle by using your phone in transit?" Caffrey asked in a dangerous tone.
"That's just cold," Stone said, shaking his head.
"The crash wasn't my phone's fault!"
"There's a point zero eight five percent chance it was your phone that returned us to blessed, blessed earth," Zheng informed them from where he was lying spread-eagled, smiling beatifically at the sky.
"I had no signal," Sunday complained, taking out her phone. "I still don't. Because we're actually in the middle of the desert. Which we should be getting out of."
"I'm not going anywhere in the company of this woman," Caffrey announced. "She is clearly a threat to us all."
"Would you be carrying anything long and sharp?" Baby asked her. "A phone stylus, perhaps, or a steel-tipped pen?"
"No," Sunday lied.
"Like that one we can all see right there?" Stone said, pointing at the pen she'd inconveniently left on show from signing her autograph. Fame had serious drawbacks.
"We'll just have to leave her behind," Belle said, smiling at them all.
"Now, wait a," Sunday started, and then something jabbed her in the neck; she had a moment to half-turn, to see an apologetic looking Mister Kim standing behind her, and then everything went dark again.
[ Full Headers and Art | Part One | Part Two | Read on DW ]