Hunting the Corrigan's Blood

Chapter 1

The corpse’s left eye squinted at me from mere centimeters away. Decomposition lent her face an increasingly inscrutable expression; the first time I’d regained consciousness, when I found myself tied to her, she looked like she had died in terror. After a while, she started leering at me, as if she had reached the place where I was going and took perverse pleasure from the thought that I would join her there soon. Now, having had her moment of amusement at my expense, she meditated; beneath thousands of dainty auburn braids, her face hung slack, bloated and discolored, the skin loosening. Threads of drool hung spiderwebbish from her gaping mouth. Her eyes, dry and sunken and filmed over beneath swollen lids, still stared directly at me.

For a while, when I’d been hallucinating, the corpse had talked to me. She’d whispered that they would come back and throw me out an airlock, into the hard vacuum of deep space; that my vile mother was stalking me; that I could never run hard enough or far enough to find freedom — that death would be my only freedom. But my mind was clear now. No hallucinations. No talking corpses. Just me and horrible pain and aching, tantalizing thirst and a stench that even several days of acclimatization couldn’t minimize; the stink of decomposition, of piss and shit, of the gangrene that I suspected was starting in on my right leg. Me … and all of that … and the body of the young woman who had waited on me during my business dinner with Peter Crane in the members-only club Ferlingetta.

I think it’s important not to overlook her. She and I, after all, were sisters of a sort. Kindred spirits. She was dead, and I was almost. We were bound together by our plight, and by flexible moleibond-braid wrist restraints that had been spot-grafted to our skin. And I figured we were where we were because we had something more than that in common. I didn’t know what, but something.

I guessed that I had been without water for almost three days. I could see the shifting of the station’s light cycles through the slats in the narrow metal door against which my rotting companion and I leaned. I recalled two separate spans of darkness and two of light. Two days that I knew of, plus whatever time I’d spent unconscious, and that felt like a lot. The gag in my mouth — permeable to air moving in but not to air moving out, so that I wouldn’t suffocate as long as I could exhale through my nose — didn’t prevent my tongue from turning into an enormous ball of hot sand. The worst thing was that my thirst didn’t distract me at all from my pain.

I hurt — but such plain words cannot convey the depth of my agony. Fire stabbed through my right side, a fire that burned hotter and more horribly with every breath I took. I’ve had broken ribs before, and I had them again. Whoever did this to me had fractured most of the bones in my right ribcage. My right hand throbbed, and when I tried to move it, the fingers didn’t respond. Perhaps my attackers jumped on it until they felt the bones give way and grind themselves into pulp. If that wasn’t what they did, it was what it felt like they had done. A million needles buried themselves deep in my thighs; my lower legs throbbed as if they had swollen beyond the capacity of the flesh to stay together and as if they would now burst. My left leg was bent so that my knee jammed into the metal wall behind the corpse, while my broken right leg twisted backward at an angle so acute the shards of my lower femur poked forward from above where my kneecap should have been like fingers trying to claw their way out my swollen, tattered flesh.

I wondered if Badger would ever find me. I didn’t think he would find me alive. Not anymore. But I didn’t want him never to know what had happened to me.

I beat my head against the metal door jammed up against my right side, and listened to the booming echoes thundering away into a cavernous, uncaring silence beyond. The first time I came around, I’d pounded myself into a stupor trying to get free or to get someone’s attention. But whoever had grabbed me had made sure I wasn’t getting out on my own … and equally sure that no one would wander along and rescue me.

My attempts at screams for help came out as throaty little whimpers, my thunderous head-banging left nothing but unbroken silence in its wake, and finally, with my head throbbing and flashing lights whirling behind my eyelids, I gave in and let darkness descend.

Giggling woke me.

The corpse was staring at me, but now she was awake, too. The warmth of our tiny cell hadn’t done her any good.

You’re dead, she told me. Just like me. Now that we’re both dead, they’re going to come back and break your bones and suck out your marrow. They’re going to eat your body, and drink your blood, and beat drums with your bones.

Delightful. It was so nice to have company.

Nobody’s going to rescue you, she told me, and her grin grew wider. It’s too late for that. You and I will never tell our secrets.

I knew all about my secrets; I hadn’t planned on telling them anyway. But I did wonder what hers were. I tried to ask her — subvocalized around the gag, but she just laughed at me.

That’s why we’re here. We had such juicy secrets.

I hated being dead. I hadn’t wanted to die, and I really hadn’t wanted to die at twenty-eight, beaten, shoved into a locker with a snide corpse, and deprived of the chance to make twenty million rucets.

That money would have let me pay off the loan on my ship, a refitted single-crew fantail corsair with a full-sized cargo hold and berths for twelve, a ship I’d named Hope’s Reward.

And all I’d had to do for the money was find a missing yacht, Corrigan’s Blood, that had belonged to Peter Crane, the owner of Monoceros Starcraft, Ltd., and bring it back.

The corpse flashed a wide smile; it kept growing wider as her face started to rip. The bones bulged out, and her jaws came at me, teeth gnashing. I heard them whirring and clicking and thumping … clicking … thumping … whirring …

I beat my head against the door again. Pounded it hard, trying with all my strength to break free from the hungry, grinning corpse, fighting with everything in me …

Whirring … clicking … thumping … whirring …

Outside of our cell! Those sounds came from outside of our cell. They were the first I’d heard in days. A bot. That wasn’t her teeth, it was a bot. I pounded my head harder, and was rewarded with the sound of metal tapping on metal. The bot’s sensors had picked up the noise, and now it was investigating. I could hear its arms working the latch that held the door closed.

It beeped and whirred and tapped and scraped, and nothing happened.

Too late anyway, of course — I was already dead. But at least Badger would know what had become of me.

I kept making as much noise as I could. Moments passed, while the bot sat outside the locker, grumbling to itself and tapping and twisting at the latch. And then I heard the sound of running feet. Human feet. Someone had looked up when the auto-bot reported a problem with one of the lockers, had heard the sounds my struggles through its sensors, and had come to help. I hoped.

"Oh, my God! What a stink!" a male voice said.

I beat my head against the metal and made such noises as the gag allowed. From the other side, I heard tools working on the door. Shit. Hold on, he said. I stopped beating my head on the door, and was surprised how much better that felt. Tiny lights flashed behind my eyelids and a red haze of pain throbbed inside of my skull. The man added, I’ll get you out. Someone has … spot-sealed the metal … but I can break the seals. I could hear him straining in between words, fighting the door.

Then something clanged, and the door flew open, and bright light and cool clean air blew across my face – and my friend and I flopped sideways onto the floor. Hard floor. Why didn’t anyone ever make floors soft and spongy? The pain in my arm and leg and ribs and head got a lot worse when I hit.

When I twisted left, I could see my rescuer standing over me. Metallic bronze Melatint skin, wave-cut Chromagloss silver hair, gold-flashed teeth, coppersheen eyes. Very stylish. Badger would approve, I thought. My rescuer held the collar of his work-suit over his nose and mouth with one hand, and worked at the flash-grafted gag in my mouth with a laserclip he held in the other.

When he pulled the gag free, he lunged back and leaned against the lockers some distance from us, and puked on the floor. The bot clicked and chuckled its annoyance at him and cleaned up the mess as he made it. It had been shoveling out the floor of the locker until his accident; when he finished, it went back to its previous work.

Who are you? he asked. He kept his face tucked behind his collar, and his cloth-muffled voice sounded weak and thready.

We’re dead, I told him, but even without the gag, the words didn’t really come out. We’re dead, I said to my pal the cadaver, and she stared right through me, her bones once again inside her skin and her grin gone. She was pretending she couldn’t hear me, and I was annoyed enough with her that if I could have kicked her, I would have.

The dockworker watched my lips move for a moment, then shook his head. Never mind. Reju on the way. His eyes were watering; the tears that rolled down his cheeks were normal-looking. I was disappointed. I’d almost expected him to cry gemstones.

I heard the approach of a reju, and the voices of men who would undoubtedly be space port controllers: sporcs. And I heard Badger’s voice raised over theirs. Good old Badger. He’d been searching for me. Hadn’t given up. Probably had links up to all the official coms, doing a little unofficial listening. When the report of bodies in a locker flashed across his compac, he came fast.

While the sporcs took care of my friend, the reju attendants loaded me into the long, sleek gray portable cellular rejuvenation unit: the medichamber. I kept telling them not to bother, that I was dead already. They weren’t listening. Nobody listens to a corpse.

I saw Badger leaning over me, asking me things I couldn’t answer; heard him tell the officers that this was his captain, Cadence Drake; saw them nod and point from me to the other corpse … and then the reju lid came down over my head and I felt the needles and tubes snake into place.

Can’t reju a corpse, I thought. Can’t.

Can’t.

Liquids flowed through my veins. Sprayers washed my skin, and replaced the unspeakable stink with a sweet scent that I recognized from too many previous reju stays as Meadow #2. I preferred designer washes like Talisman or Savage Lust, but at least the stocker hadn’t filled the spray tank with Lilac. I don’t know what a Lilac is or was, but anything that stickily, sappily sweet ought to have been consigned to deep space, along with whoever made it.

My head cleared. The hallucinations went away. I wasn’t dead after all; I’d hung on long enough; I had beaten my abductors and I was going to live.

Since I was going to live, I thought it might be nice not to feel like the inside of an afterburner. I kept hoping for a shot of zorphin, which would have made me groggy and happy and would have chased away the pain, but the sporcs would want to talk with me … and zorphin would make that process difficult.

Badger leaned over the reju and smiled through the faceplate at me. I’m glad you made it, Cady. Really glad. I thought I’d lost you. His voice crackled through the speakers, but even with the distortion, I could feel his emotions. Fear, relief … maybe love.

You aren’t going to lose me, I told him.

Badger worried the inside of his lower lip with his teeth for a moment, then nodded. What happened?

I gave him as much of a grin as my cracked lips and battered face would allow, and said, We got the job.

Chapter 2

Three whole days I spent in that reju unit; healing the first two and law-sealed the third. Three days while my quarry ran further and further from me and the trail grew colder. I spent most of those three days lying to the sporcs.

I was lying to protect my client, but I couldn’t tell them that, of course. What I did tell them was that I didn’t have any idea why I had been attacked, though I suspected it was because I was carrying a fair stack of rucets — originally, rucets were Regulated Universal Currency Exchange Tokens, but now that everyone knows there’s no such thing as a universally acceptable currency, they’re just rucets; that I didn’t recognize the body in the locker with me, though she did seem a little familiar; that I was docked at Cassamir Station to replenish my personal biologicals stocks and to have the origami unit on my ship updated. This last was true, but certainly not the whole truth.

I wasn’t entirely honest when I described the people who attacked me, but what I did tell the sporcs was true enough. My usually-sharp memory got very fuzzy when I tried to bring my three assailants to mind. I said I could only remember that they were of indeterminate color, of average height and weight, and of ordinary appearance … except for their eyes. I described their eyes; pale and burning with a feverish, hungry intensity, eyes that had spent a good deal of time contemplating death and liking the images such thoughts conjured. Those eyes haunted my dreams and in my waking moments sent little chills across my shoulders and down my spine. I told the sporcs the truth about those eyes, but they weren’t impressed. I didn’t tell them that one of my three assailants was gene-damaged; that he’d been a giant. That single tiny bit of information I kept to myself. I wasn’t sure what I intended to do with it, but knowledge is power, and I wasn’t in favor of giving away mine.

I think the sporcs would have kept the lock on my reju until I eventually broke and told them everything, except that my client came to my rescue and through a third party bought them off. Space stations are like that. They are the fiefdoms of the men and women who put up the capital to construct them and who run their businesses in them. Most stations are the result of private enterprise, and none that I know of answer to any planetary government. They have too much independent power to kowtow. As such, they can be benevolent havens or regimented hells.

Cassamir was neither, but somewhere in the middle. It was the communal property of Disney Starward Entertainment, Whithampton-Trobisher Ore Processing, Cassamir Biologicals, Kayne Fantasy Sensos, McDonald’s, Monoceros Starcraft, Ltd., Huddle House Intergalactic, and The Ëburgi Group. Because of its corporate ownership, it had a corporate personality, which I don’t like, but which does mean that the sporcs know where their paychecks come from and remember that fact when pressure is applied. Even when murder is involved.

If you want justice, don’t get killed on a space station. This was an old rule of mine, and one that I’d come too close to breaking.

Badger showed up late on the third day, bringing a few of my belongings for me. I first knew he’d finally come for me when his ugly face filled the reju faceplate, and at last that face was grinning. When I’d seen him the day before, he’d looked fairly normal — at least for him. Now, though, his skin was the most hideous shade of metallic green, and he’d had his irises done in iridescent purple and his hair staticked, copperflashed, and illuminated, so that it glowed even in bright light and every hair stood away from every other and all of them crackled with sparks when he walked. I wish to hell I could keep Badger away from the bodyart shops. He has dreadful taste.

You ready to go home?

Days ago, I told him.

He waited while the sporcs removed the law-seals and helped me out of the reju. He’d brought a mini-holo for me and some clothes. I pulled on the jumpsuit, then flashed myself with the holo. The image took a second to build in front of me.

I felt the eyes of the sporcs on me while I stood there. I’m used to stares; after all, I am a Maryschild. My mother was the founder of the Marys, that short-lived movement that she ostensibly started to eliminate racial tension by creating raceless children. When she started the movement, she purchased three fathers for me from a memorial sperm bank, all as physically different from her type as she could find. Then she insisted that the geneticist who cut and spliced her genes with those of the three dead donors double the recessives and remove the dominants so that my features would clearly reflect the ‘pure’ influences of each of my parents.

They do. From my mother I have my coffee-with-a-touch-of-cream skin and full lips and straight teeth. From one of my fathers I have high, sharp cheekbones and slanting almond-shaped eyes with a pronounced epicanthic fold, though the eyes themselves are a vivid and startling blue, the gift of another father. My hair is straight and the color of amber, my nose is long and thin. My body is long and angular. I look like what I am — an outdated fashion statement.

I am a living flag who was born to be waved in my mother’s little war; her purpose in creating me was anything but benign. She wasn’t looking for peace or harmony or even a kid she could love; she was looking for power, trying to create a sweeping army of angry women who would bear their children and sit them at her feet so she could indoctrinate them into bitterness and plans for revenge against a universe she despised. And everything she taught was a lie.

Race doesn’t exist.

Skin color exists. Hair and eye color are real. Body type varies from individual to individual, as does tooth shape and color, the form of fingernails, and the amount and texture of body hair. But ‘race’ is a phantom conjured up by people no different from each other than purebred Cocker spaniels are. Race is a lie, and the people who conjure by it, no matter their color or their politics, are liars.

The image finished building and I saw that the reju had reshaped my face again, making the jaw slightly rounder. It had also skinned out the little fat I had and stripped off a lot of muscle. Reju is supposed to return you to your genetic peak, but I don’t know of a single place that hasn’t set its units with local body fashion in mind. On Cassamir, skinny with big tits was the look, and I was going to have to spend additional time in my private unit to get back the muscular, small-breasted body I preferred.

Looking sweet, Badger told me.

Go dock a bot, you pervert.

He laughed; I grinned. Alive felt wonderful. Free felt even better.

We took a gravdrop back to our ship, and the entire trip, I tried to remember when I had been attacked and where … and how. But it was all gone.

When we were inside and the privacy fields were up, Badg turned to me. Do you still have everything?

I grinned. They didn’t have any idea where to look.

Perfect. Let’s have it.

I reached into the right front pocket of my jumpsuit, undid the pressure-seal closure at the bottom, and stretched my hand through to the inside of my thigh. I pressed against my fleshtab. The fleshtab was the result of a black market breakthrough in reju technology on an ugly little private planet that circles the F-class star Tegosshu. The living skin separated and I pulled out two infochips. The first was a standard chip that Peter Crane had given me to help me get started on his job. The second was a dopplerchip I had taken of our meeting.

I handed Badger the dopplerchip and he dropped it into the holoplayer.

There was a soft hum; then the rec room became a gray-on-gray replica of Ferlingetta. Peter Crane and I took shape: solid-looking charcoal-colored three-dimensional forms seated at a gracefully filigreed gray table surrounded by gray plants and the increasingly less solid shapes of decor, staff, and other diners. Badger and I watched my double’s hand move away from the pressure point on my abdominal wall that had started the doppler recording.

— to be so cautious, you must have made some ferocious enemies. Peter Crane templed his fingers in front of his chin and smiled at the recorded me. The corners of his eyes crinkled.

Badger made a face. My, oh, my. I wonder how he figured that out.

Shut up and watch.

Peter Crane was one of the five most powerful people on Cassamir Station; the sole owner of Monoceros Starcraft, Ltd., and according to rumor, the biggest stakeholder in Cassamir Station itself. Sitting across from him, I had felt neither the weight of his wealth nor the subtle demands of his power. Easy-going and friendly, he wore his straight black hair in a casual cut and his skin natural. His clothes were tasteful, hearkening back to Old Earth styles without slavishly imitating them. He was a fifth-generation stationer, a direct descendent of Athabascan Eskimos who invested their tribal earnings in space technology and made a fortune doing it. If you’re as good as Lize says you are, I’ll make you twenty million rucets richer, Peter Crane said.

Badger paused the recording. Which Lize?

Anelize Daredwyn, I told him. She was a former client — a good one. She had given Crane my contact information, and given me her recommendation of him.

The funny thing was, if Peter Crane had found me without having someone to vouch for him, I might have taken him on anyway. I rarely like my clients … but I liked him.

I restarted the recording and my imaged self smiled at Crane. I’m that good, the image assured him.

You’re that cocky, Badger said, grinning at me.

I damped down the hum of conversations in the rest of Ferlingetta and refined the sound of my conversation with Peter. I didn’t bother to answer Badger. He knew I was good at my job.

I call myself an Independent Reclamations Specialist; I find things — expensive things — things stolen from their rightful owners. I return these things for fifteen percent of their retail value. I deal primarily with corporations because corporations are where the money is. I occasionally accept employment from a private customer, if the missing item or the manner in which it disappeared interests me; the money is never as good as corporate money, though.

Good, Crane said. I admire skill above all things.

A woman sauntered down the manicured grass path to our table; she was small and lithe. My memory supplied the absent details of red hair, ivory skin and freckles.

I hit the pause button and turned to Badger. That’s her.

He squinted and looked uncertain. The corpse?

Yeah.

You want to go back and track her now?

I thought about it, then shook my head. Not yet. Let’s finish this first, then focus on her and see if anything interesting comes up.

Badger resumed the holo, and the waiter flipped her hair back, and the thousands of tiny braids swung over her shoulders. Mado Crane? Her gaze passed over me as if I were invisible; she focused entirely on Crane. How may I be of service? She ducked her head in his direction when she said it. She didn’t acknowledge me.

A bottle of my private stock, please. The Gorland Harvest ’46. Crane turned to me, pointedly forcing the waiter to acknowledge my presence. And would you like anything else, Mada Drake?

Please … it’s just Cadence … and no, I’m fine.

The desserts are all excellent.

My doppleganger shook her head. Really. Old Earth cuisine is much richer than anything I’m used to. I couldn’t eat another bite.

Holy hell, Badger said. You passed up Old Earth dessert at a place like that? I wouldn’t have. They probably bring in the stuff from planet-side. I’ll bet they don’t use any reconsta at all.

The little things got to Badger.

Crane waved the waiter off.

What do you want me to find for twenty million rucets?

He stopped smiling. A man named John Alder, acting as a purchasing agent for a financial concern called the Winterleigh Corporation, acquired from me a ship — the best private yacht Monoceros builds, our newest model. He said Winterleigh wanted it to permit its officers to travel quickly and in comfort when on business. I’d say fifty percent of my top-of-the-line ships are used for that purpose.

He paused, and my double nodded.

That true? Badger asked me.

Mostly. Monoceros’ corporate customers make up sixty-four percent of their business, but I think he was just rounding.

My imaged self was busy trying to look worthy of a twenty million rucet fee. Your most expensive private yachts sell for right at a hundred million rucets, the other me said, leaning forward and resting my elbows on my knees. This posture change is supposed to tell my client that I’m earnest, eager, and attentive. Probably it doesn’t say much more than that I have a hard time sitting in a chair for more than an hour. But I try to give a good impression. My fee is fifteen percent of the retail value of whatever I can collect. Fifteen percent of the retail price of the most expensive ship you sell is fifteen million rucets. You could do a lot of things with the extra five million, Mado Crane. The other me smiled, trying to look relaxed. I recalled distinctly that I hadn’t been relaxed. Or I could.

Trying to lighten the situation with humor? Badger asked.

Trying to figure out why he wanted to overpay us so heavily.

Crane looked past my shoulder and up; he was watching the cold expanse of space showcased by the enormous window that made up most of Ferlingetta’s far wall. I saw my image turn to look at the window; in the doppler holo it was a flat, shiny gray expanse.

What’s he looking at? Badger wanted to know.

I had to think for an instant. A convoy of freighters was docking.

The station’s private club could give its patrons a clear view of the origami point, and they chose the docks?

It’s about money, I told Badger. The rich don’t want to see beauty. They want to watch their money coming in.

Crane’s image turned away from the window. The fifteen is your fee. The extra five million is a bonus for you, because this is personal.

You were a friend of … My double paused for a second. …John Alder?

No.

You’ve dealt with Winterleigh before?

No.

The doppleganger pursed her lips, and I felt my own follow suit as I watched the conversation replay. Five million rucets is a lot of personal.

"Yes. It is. But the Corrigan’s Blood is a lot of ship."

My other self waited.

Crane sighed, leaned forward, rested his arms on his knees. Sincere, intent … or else his butt was getting tired, too. "Like most of our best ships, the Blood has trans-fold navigational capability. The Blood has a new model of TFN unit, however, that permits on-the-fly course changes while in hyperspace, and the detection of origami points from within hyperspace."

The doppleganger’s mouth dropped open. So did Badger’s. Mid-course changes? I heard myself ask, sounding stupidly breathless. I was going to have to work on that.

Almost instantaneous.

And point recalculation.

Absolutely. It will even predict new points. I’ve found several in my trial runs.

My God, my image and Badger said in unison.

Badger stopped the holo and backed the conversation up. He replayed the last portion of it, then paused it and sat staring forward, as if he could see through the ship’s walls to our own TFN.

If you’ve never run a ship through hyperspace, you cannot imagine what Crane’s innovations mean. Hyperspace is convenient but damnably unfriendly. The math makes sense but the place itself doesn’t. As far as I know, no one has ever understood enough about it to do more than figure out a way in and a way out. And those lines from origami point to origami point — the fold-points in our three-dimensional universe — were rigid. A drone watching a ship’s speed and trajectory as it entered a point could calculate the ship’s exact destination. Traffic control has always made use of that capability; interstellar surveillance drones called Spybees were stationed at the periphery of every point to keep records of ship ID, speed, trajectory, declared destination point, and calculated actual destination. The drones send that information to central intelligence-gathering stations, which analyze the ships going through and look for correlations to crimes committed within the relevant time frames. Space travelers had less privacy than the planet-bound; but governments insisted there was a payoff. The Spybees were responsible for catching a number of serial killers, and were supposed to be a preventative to piracy.

With the new Monoceros ships, the Spybees would become worthless.

Badger turned to me and said, I want one of those ships. Even if we have to steal it, I want one.

That’s evidently what Mado Alder thought, too. Which is why we have a job.

Badger looked at me and sighed, and slowly reached out and started the holo again.

This was a prototype unit, then? my image asked Crane’s.

No. It was one of our early production units.

I watched myself tip my head to one side; my puzzlement was obvious. "I can understand your desire to get your property back, but I’m afraid I don’t understand why you’re paying a bonus when you’ve obviously registered the technology and secured your rights against other