Re-Coil - J.T. Nicholas Page 0,39
necessary for plant life. I winced a little as I thought about the water requirements, but that was the spacer in me. No matter how many ice comets could be mined and brought to a hab, there was only so much water you could store. It took up a lot of room, and the mass calculations were staggering. But a planet didn’t suffer from those limitations, and the carbon-scrubbing and oxygen-production of the trees certainly helped offset their expense. Still, it seemed an extravagance, particularly as I thought about the few credits remaining to my name.
The exterior of the building was drab and plain, a simple twelve-story prefab construction of composite sheets. That exterior, however, hid the treasure within. The interior didn’t scream wealth. Screaming in that establishment would have been far too crass. Instead, it murmured money, in a sort of sotto voce drawl that drew the eye to the understated elegance of the lobby. Everywhere I looked, I saw wood—real wood, not like the molded plastic of the exterior—that glowed in golden shades of honey and amber. A sweeping staircase climbed majestically on our right, and a guest counter, with an actual smiling woman standing behind it, beckoned from the left. I started to turn in that direction, but Chan grabbed my elbow.
“Already taken care of,” she said brusquely as she steered me toward a bank of elevators slightly deeper into the hotel lobby.
“Chan… how can you possibly afford all this?”
She grinned, and despite the coil she wore, that grin had just a bit of naughty little girl in it. “I didn’t pick this place for the amenities. I picked it because it has security protocols so outdated that Bit could practically have hacked it without my help. Now hurry up, before the receptionist or whatever she is gets curious.” I felt a slight moment of guilt at the growing damages of our larcenous behavior, but given that someone was trying to kill us, I didn’t let it bother me too much. If fleecing a corporation or two was the price for staying alive, my moral compass could bear it.
The elevators took us up to the eighth floor. The hallways lacked the imported woods of the lobby but were still neat and well-kept. The room that Chan led me to should have been disappointing after the lobby. There were two beds, neatly made, and a bathroom off to one side. A long, low dresser rested against a wall opposite the beds, with a viewscreen integrated into the wall behind it. It was, at best, standard fare. But the size of it! The room was easily twice the size of my quarters aboard Daedalus, and maybe three times the size of my berth aboard the Persephone. One entire wall was made of transparent plasteel and presented a view of the Martian city.
“Nice,” I said.
Chan dropped onto one of the beds, letting her bag fall unceremoniously at its side. I was still traveling without luggage, carrying only what could be strapped to the VaccTech suit that remained my only set of clothing. Unlike my previous suit, it had been specifically designed with long-term, continuous use in mind, and was actually quite a bit more comfortable than the suit I’d lost, despite the added bulk. Still, I took the time to unclip the various pouches from the suit, as well as remove the holstered Gauss pistol before dropping onto the other bed.
“Is this going to work, Carter?” Chan asked, her voice steeped in a tiredness that had nothing to do with physical fatigue.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “Maybe Copeland will know something. Maybe not the details, but if he’s been re-coiled, they had to tell him something. Even without the video my branch sent, we knew we went out on the Persephone for salvage. We knew the general vicinity of space. He’ll know something, some little crumb of information that maybe seems meaningless to him, but it will give us the next little bit, the next little clue to find out what happened to us. We’ll find the truth, Chan.” The grim determination in that declaration surprised me, but it paired well with the slow-burning anger that I felt churning in my gut.
“And then what? What happens when we find the truth?”
I felt my lips twist in a bitter smile. “I don’t know, Chan. If this is as big as I think it might be, then we’re talking government and corporate involvement. There isn’t a lot we can do, not directly,