[2.5] Nobody Knows Anything About Nothing

Hauke got off the phone with Camilla without telling her that he was less than fifty miles away, enduring a sandstorm from the safety of a mobile command tent a few miles outside Varus, one of the largest cities in Serinasca. He leaned back in his chair, turning from the communications set-up and picking up the folder full of situation briefings.

He had known about the Efferis's new financial status long before she called. He also knew that Conlan was making a trip to somewhere in Diminea, the purpose of which was still vague but growing clearer.

"Matt," he mumbled, wiping his brow and flipping to one of the last pages in the book - a memo he had written a couple of months back, noting his suspicions that the manhunt through Braslia, Pretia, and two other countries had been targeting one of the agency's former would-be assets. Since then, he had deduced that (if it was her) she had evaded capture and made it to either Costa Rhial or Costa Nocehina. And now, presumably with a portion of his windfall in tow, Conlan was sailing straight over to that very region.

"What is it about her that keeps everyone from thinking straight?"

This was just about the worst time possible to leave the fortress. Everyone from reporters to event promoters to salespeople were going to be descending in search of endorsements and quotes and lord knows what else. Short of a lock down, nothing would stop the bombardment. But for Mattica, well, she more or less generated a hurricane by force of thought.

A wayward gust of wind slammed the north side of the tent, blowing the door in and permitting a spiral of sand to plaster the center conference table. Before he could refasten the tent flaps (whoever had left last had done it wrong) every loose paper in the room had been displaced.

This was not the kind of nonsense he had flown down here for. Where was the rest of the team? Didn't they have contingencies for storms? At this point they were going to be caught off-guard . . .

Under the tent, the sand rippled.

[2.4] You And All Your Friends

The fortress had changed overnight. Parties had broken out on every floor, all the house restaurants were packed, and already more pilots and mech teams were flying in from the mainland. The phones and commspheres were in constant use, with people spreading the news and upping their investments on the Efferis. Camilla had her hands full keeping the place from collapsing into a drunken, blissful mess.

Conlan had been able to avoid it all by not leaving his offices and keeping his phone disconnected. This didn't stop Graham though, who burst in a few minutes before noon, sucking fruit smoothie through a curly straw and still humming some drinking song that had been going for three straight hours downstairs. 

"Did you call the guy - Corvenieto or whatever - yet? You were supposed to call me up here before you called the guy so I could coach you-"

"I already called," Conlan said, from where was laying on the floor beside the couch (he had missed, didn't see the point in correcting situation).

"Aw, man." Graham settled on the coffee table. "Well, did you at least say what I told you to say? You know, 'I'm going to make an offer you can't-'"

"Did you get the information I asked for?"

"Dude, what do you take me for? Here."

He scraped around in his jacket pocket for a while before retrieving a small square of paper and dropping it on Conlan's head. "You've gotta call before you get there, though. There's a couple of other buyers."

He would have to move fast then. It would be just like fate to give him the money and then make the purchase impossible. Pulling himself to his feet, Conlan walked back over to his desk and added the paper to the quickly thickening folder on his desk. 

"When are you leaving, anyway?" Graham asked.

"This afternoon. Loteara's still transferring funds, and I want to make sure Cam's got a handle on this . . . "

"She was on the phone with Hauke earlier."

Conlan looked up sharply. "What?"

Graham put his smoothie down and laid back on the table. "Yep. He already knew about your whole jackpot deal, too. Someone in Loteara told him about it."

"Why is it any of his business?"

Graham shrugged."Maybe it's not. Maybe it's the government's business. He's all up in that spook business lately, anyway. He was calling from Mountova, and when a guy like Hauke goes to Mountova you know it's to blow something away."

"You think he's coming here?"

"Why don't you just ask Cam?"

"We don't talk about him."

"Because they're best friends and you think he's a-"

"I've gotta pack. Isn't your bar open right now? Shouldn't you be down there?"

"Yeah, yeah. Cam's looking for you though. Better talk to her soon."

Conlan turned to the floor-to-ceiling windows that made up the back wall of his office and sighed. No matter how much he worked, things never got easy.

[2.3] The Good Lady Robin Hood

She already had something of a stash going. Mattica got down on her knees beside the futon and felt around beneath it until her fingers brushed against the scuffed leather of the army surplus duffle bag she had pilfered from the cargo bay of an old airship. At present it contained some of the more coherent books from Corvendo's shelves in one of the compound break rooms, a case of phiris picks from the garage that Matt didn't know were still in production, and two keys. She wasn't sure what they unlocked, but she was hoping at least one of them would work on the storage room where Corvendo had locked her stuff. This was just a start, of course. It wasn't like her services were being adequately paid for, and she was looking for a little more compensation.

Corvendo occasionally had her order tools and other equipment for the garage. Most of what came in was a second-rate knock-off of a familiar brand, but some had been useful enough to make her take notice. These she had stored away in drawers and cabinets where their absence wouldn't be immediately picked up on. As if she were all that worried about prosecution in Pellel, where there wasn't so much a police force as there was armed guards.

Mattica slept in a small office off one of the main workshops, in which a small cargo craft currently resided. An equipment cache lay thirty feet across the shop that no one ever remembered to lock (at Matt probably could have picked it if they had), and she slung the duffle bag over her shoulder, easily finding her way across the garage in the dark.

Somewhere in the building another drinking party had commenced, and faint shouts and laughter drifted over the workshop. She hoped Corvendo was with them. In the morning, talking to Conlan would be ten times wore with a hangover. Then again, Conlan was paying the big bucks to get her home. Corvendo might just throw another party - which almost made her want to escape anyway just to spite him.

She opened the door to the cache silently, slipping inside and closing the door and window blinds before switching on the room's single bare bulb. Revealed to her: four heavy tool chests, two ceiling-high cabinets, and a line of drawers embedded under the work counter. Most of the contents would be rusty, or else just the same four wrenches and three screwdrivers, maybe with different colored grips. Things went missing in the garage daily, only to turn up right after a replacement was purchased (another cue to Mattica that sweeping the place would be easy, even though she was relatively green when it came to theft). Matt knew where all the good stuff was kept, though.

She dropped the duffle bag and crouched beside one of the tool chests, prying open the bottom drawer. When she accounted events to Camilla later on, she was definitely going to have to make it clear that she really wasn't "stealing" per se. Just . . . delivering some divine justice, like that mythical goddess that rewarded undue good fortune with a devastating storm.

[2.2] The Facts Were These

Fifteen minutes later the plans were set and Mattica pushed away from the commsphere, watching for a moment as the screen fizzled out to a dusty grey. Its internal cooling unit wheezed and sputtered, then gave a loud cough before retiring until the next time the sphere decided to put a cal through.

"G'night," Mattica whispered under her breath. She pushed her hair back out of her face and let out a restless sigh.

She was leaving.

She was returning to the free world.

She needed to steal some crap first.

Granted, the company she had kept during her "captivity" had been detestable, but not everything in the backwards little valley town of Pellel had been as torturous as was probably intended. In fact, if Mattica was feeling, for some reason, particularly optimistic, she could almost look at it as some sort of character training. Only, if she had her way the bounty was going to be as physical as it was mental.

Mattica had been living on a pseudo-government compound under the custody of one Liaz Corvendo, a disgustingly loyal ward of Pellel's very own corrupt town official/land lord/king pin. Matt didn't really care to distinguish which was the most accurate. She suspected he had his hand in any number of felonies, from political intimidation to drug running, but frankly the details aren't particularly important. Eight months earlier, fleeing certain incarceration in countries not know for their feats of human rights, Mattica had flown a battered maintenance ship toward resort country Costa Rhial, only to have a fuel leak ground her in the paradise's less favorable neighbor. Local officials (Corevendo among them) had been sympathetic and downright cordial to their foreign guest at first, giving her access to the town's deteriorating but serviceable airship garage.

Corvendo, enterprising little lackey that he was, thought to do a quick run-up on her, and discovered that she not only had a number of job licenses for mechanics and bounty hunting to her name, but that she was also wanted in a number of neighboring countries for offenses that were likely to be interpreted as felonies. Never mind that half of them were obviously trumped-up charges designed to ensnare traveling Alliance nationals. Corvendo saw what he had and made a grab for it. He sabotaged her ship, separated her from her belongings, and with his patron's blessing served her up an ultimatum at gunpoint: enter into contract with the town as a  mechanic for Honorable Markel Valleis (the aforementioned corrupt official) or be detained and extradited to whatever country he deemed the least hospitable.

Without weapons, a ship, or any chance of evading Pellel's numerous degenerates all the way to the next town thirty miles away, Mattica had shrugged and submitted to the contract, which stipulated that she see at least fifty projects through to completion (which amounted to about three-five years, depending on th vessels in question).

Mattica had intended to escape at some point. It would have been loud and flashy and worthy of its own story, only that resources were scarce and time passed quickly. Besides, with the exception, again, of the company she kept, conditions were tolerable. She was fed, housed, and provided a small allowance (even though there was little in Pellel worth purchasing). Even the strictest of restrictions Corvendo placed on her were easy to cheat, and Matt suspected he was new to the hostage-taking business. While her curfew was enforced by armed guards stationed around the compound's perimeter, she had hacked the antiquated commsphere network the first week of her capture, and she made herself a private (and invisible  account for sending and receiving calls. Unfortunately, with the contact binding, having access to a phone did little to help and legal attempts at a getaway. All it was good for was keeping in touch withe Camilla, and other friends with any particular interest in her continued well-being.

Like Conlan, infuriatingly leading the rescue charge she had spent countless hours trying to stop. Not that Conlan ever got enthusiastic about it or anything. Just, "Let me come and get you already," or "So what if there's a scandal. Can't fault a guy for shooting a couple of kidnappers, can you?" And she would bristle at the idea that she had been "kidnapped" like some damned damsel in distress. If anything she was a political prisoner! But, anyway. Conlan just didn't know how to take care of himself - he just had to meddle with other people's problems . . . which just ended with her trying to fix things for him.

That's what it felt like, anyway. Or what it used to feel like. It had been a long time since she'd been back.

But there was no use thinking like that now. He was coming to get her legitimately, and she could rest easy about it. He would be there in two days at the most.

"Start packing," he had said. Well, she definitely planned to.

[2.1] Monster Woman Lives

The garage commsphere was many years older than Mattica, and thus thought itself above such banal functions as ringing or polite chiming. When there was a call - which seemed to engender in it some significant level of resentment - it rattled and clanked and seized as though foretelling the end of the world.

Mattica loved the old thing. Kindred spirits, they were. When it came exploding to crotchety life at nearly three in the morning, she hauled herself off her dusty futon and shuffled across the concrete.

The screen came on like a scratch ticket being uncovered: there was a jawline, an ear, a thumb pressed against the display to angle it upward. She knew who it was before face cleared up.

"Gods, does the idea of time zones just totally bounce off your head? What is wrong with you?"

His voice was clipped, distorted, and seemed to force its way out of the speakers. "What? You weren't even sleeping, anyway."

"How would you know?"

"Pfft. You never sleep before morning."

"Sure, when I was a kid I didn't have stuff to do like slave away for the scum of the earth."

"Yeah, about that."

"I'm done with you."

"Start packing."

"You're not using me to besmirch your family's name."

"It's not-"

"If Sterling money comes into this cesspool, should I describe again what will happen if anyone with a journalism degree hears about it? I coulda sworn the last earful I gave you was enough."

". . . Did you say 'besmirch'?"

She slumped her head over the comm's dashboard. "There's nothing to do out here but read really melodramatic intrigue scripts."

When she looked up again Conlan's face was more or less visible. And more or less disgustingly smug.

"Don't look at me like that unless you have a 1,500 word essay describing why it is OK."

"I'm going to buy your contract."

He had said that a thousand times, like a knight in shining armor just revving to go, except that shutting him down had become second nature to her. His family was easily one of the most influential in the free world. Conlan himself was technically in line for the Lotearan throne. And there she was, stuck in one of the most impossibly corrupt nations, with one foot in a jail cell. If it came out that Sterling money had bought an accused convict, the scandal would be astronomical.

She propped herself up on an elbow, hooking the leg of a stool on her foot and dragging it over to sit on. "That was six words. You fail."

"I don't see anything 'besmirching' about a fortress in the market for a new airship mechanic."

". . . No way. Efferis doesn't have the money."

"It does now."

[2.0] First Homecoming

The recovery lounge was empty now. Of course, all the pilots were back in their quarters, or at the bar, and for the most part all the mechanics and medical technicians had been dismissed. Conlan's orders, probably, and Vincent obliging him. The two of them were eternally in-cahoots.

Camilla waited on the platform where the Camalus would ultimately come to rest. Right now it was still in the open-air dock, being cooled down and rigged up and relieved of its cargo. She could see it through the big garage door that led from the platform: the whole craft was smoking, and a small team bustled around it, looking for safe places to hitch the lifts. All she could see was a portion of the starboard side, and some of the panelling slipped off like citrus rinds.

Vincent had told her. Told her that he'd insisted on flying the thing back on his own. In that wreck, and at the shape he must have been in . . .

She squeezed her nails into her palms and did a little turn around the platform.

What am I going to do with him?

The first thing she heard, before she even picked the little caddy's engine out of the soup of machine noise, was Graham.

Naturally.

". . . to say that it wasn't basically the most mind-blowing thing you've ever done, 'cause it was and I don't want to take away from your achievements or anything, achievements are important when you run this kind of business - but it was really freaking stupid, man. Like, if I weren't a technical pacifist and all, and if you didn't look, you know, like you just pulled a marathon flight in a wrecked airship, I'd definitely consider socking you in the ribs right now."

"Just watch where you're driving."

"What kind of answer is that? Dude, you really must be exhausted."

Conlan was slumped in the back of the jeep, arms spread out across the back of seats and his head slumped forward. His clothes were rumpled. Half the collar of his shirt was still tucked under his flying jacket, and the other was bent up against his neck. She could make observations about his hair, but that was usually a bit of a mess anyway.

The worst thing was his eyes. At some point some lumia flecks must have gotten into the cabin, because they were inflamed and the left one had an unhealthy sheen that needed washing-out. He looked up at her when the dock caddy came to a stop a few feet away, and he managed a smirk.

"Well? You can scold me now, if you want. I probably I owe you that much."

This whole time she had been waiting, she'd been trying to decide how she should respond. There were so many reasons to be infuriated with him, and just as many reasons to be happy.

She settled finally, with giving his arm a little jostle.

"You shouldn't have hung up on me," she told him, with a small smile, "but I'm assuming you thought it was for my own good."

"Yeah, well, he shouldn't assume," Graham put in, turning sideways in the driver's seat. "You pretty much sent everyone into cardiac arrest. You're lucky there weren't any really old people with faint hearts in the lobby, or you might be looking at manslaughter right now, buddy."

Conlan huffed and looked over his shoulder at the still-smoking Camalus. "Don't know if it was even worth it. Most of the money will be absorbed in getting us a new ship."

Camilla teetered forward with an incredulous laugh. "What on Celares are you talking about? A new ship? Conlan, do you know how much that last burst is worth? We could almost buy a new fleet. We could buy the Andrasta! And remodel the whole airstation. Fund your racing career for the next ten seasons!"

He stared at her. ". . . What?"

"We're rolling in dough," Graham said, flipping out of the jeep and strolling off toward the docks.

"It was special grade lumia in that burst," Camilla elaborated. "It must have been sitting there, purifying, for decades. Maybe that snake kept anyone from reach it - I really have no clue, but it's worth triple what you already had in the turbine. We're already talking to Loteara - the Armed Forces Commission's going to purchase the whole lot for 150% the market value."

He continued to stare at her, but she wasn't sure she was the one he was seeing.

"We have enough to claim the Andrasta?" he asked. He leaned forward a little, eyebrows raised.

She giggled. "Yeah. Yes, we do. Definitely."

"So, we also have enough money for a new contractor. A mechanic, for the Andastra?"

She frowned. Maybe he'd taken a blow to the head or something? Sure, it was a lot of money, but Conlan wasn't the type to get this . . . dazed about it. Even if it was the Andastra. And so what if they could afford a new contractor -

Oh.

"We have enough to buy a contract," she said, quietly.

She met Conlan's eyes.

She repeated, so loud that her voice reverberated off the high walls of the lounge: "The fortress has enough money to buy a contract!"

[1.5] Implausible Perfection

Somewhere, Camilla Rosen gripped the desk monitor in a kind of trance, watching the screen as Vincent worked to reconnect with the Camalus.

The lobby, in dull shock, waited.

***

Stars fell, along with crashing, curving curtains of light that cut the malfunctioning lumia shields like a Desdairan claymore. A trail of fire followed the Camalus as it descended.

Above, explosions and death. The snake hit the detonating burst field. The snake, predictably, detonated along with it. Fortunately, he was far and away from that particular mess.

So, Conlan continued to fall, in his oversized tin can, through shafts of ribbed air. Remarkably uninterested eyes observed the lumia burst pass through his line of sight and back out of it.

He counted, under his breath. Did some calculations. A little geometry. Deduced how much fuel was actually left in the tank, as opposed to how much the gauge testified. The state of the air currents were slowing his descent, so he had more time than he thought he would for planning.  

Then he righted the ship and reignited the engine for the Camalu's last flight before being gutted for scrap.

***

Camilla watched on the restored diagnostic read-out as Conlan flew up in a perfect inverted arc, dodging the fallout of what must have been the most bloody luma explosion she had ever seen, and engaged the wand and net to bring the lumia burst home.

He had adjusted the fuel gauge. Even when it read empty, there was still just enough for one more Hail Mary. 

The burst of lumia entered the Camalus' turbine, and after a short load screen the monitor spelled it out for her and the whole audience in nodes.

Graham, up on the balcony, put it best:

"Jackpot."

***

"Hey, Vincent."

"Hold on a second, Conlan. Coordinating your rescue, at the moment."

"That's what I wanted to talk to you about. I just need . . . " He coughed. ". . . a jump start, OK? I can fly this thing in on my own."

"You caught the burst. I think you've more or less exhausted everyone's wish for dramatics."

"I know. That's what I'm saying. I don't want a lot of guys out here trying to pull me in. Ship's a wreck. It's gonna . . . Just, minimum response, alright? Just get me enough spark to fly her in quietly."

Vincent sighed. Dialed up the response team. "Whatever you say."