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  He finally finished with her screen. “I’m interested in components for aquaculture systems, gen ship waste disposal, cryopod banks, and AI 6th age hardwiring.”

  Either he really did know about gen ships or someone had practiced with him hardcore before this visit. Could have included schooling in the Oka accent. Briar ignored the twinge of doubt about Lincoln Caster’s intentions and countered him with some facts. “Zhengs didn’t have AI 6th age hardwiring.”

  “Oldest ones did,” he said. “Before they switched to soft tube.”

  He was testing her. She did not fail tests. But she could test him right back. “I can have my people double check, but since zhengs never had hardwiring for their AIs, they aren’t going to find it.”

  “I could take a look around for it,” he offered. “You said a twenty upcharge?”

  Letting a buyer onto the ship? The TUB would never go for that. Was this supposed to tempt her to violate protocol and get in trouble? “I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

  “How many zhengs have you processed?” he asked. “The hardwire is delicate, and if you don’t know what you’re doing… Well.”

  Now it was his turn to wait for her to speak. The man had rattled her. This day rattled her. “We know what we’re doing.”

  Was it true? Had Steven discovered something about the ship and was trying to prove she couldn’t navigate a transaction this major? Tank Union never bought entire gen ships, but Steven was part of the union, too. Why would he want to squash their profits?

  “None,” Lincoln Caster guessed. “You’ve never had a zheng, and whoever you bought it from didn’t know what they had, either.”

  He was right. Endeavor Factory 5 had not made the best deal—for them. It was fantastic for Tank Union. For her. Fat lot of good it had done. “That’s not relevant.”

  “It is if you destroy what you’re trying to sell,” he said.

  “We know what we’re doing,” she repeated, her uncertainty rising. “Are you sure you weren’t told about this ship by Steven Wat? I can show you a holo of him or his voice print. It’s important.”

  Lincoln Caster didn’t answer right away, but that seemed to be his style. “I’m sure.”

  She checked her chrono. Steven was still in the building next door. “How do you know some zhengs have hardwired AIs? Modern AIs get hardwired because we can’t manufacture the soft tubes anymore, but what good is 3000 year old hardwire?

  “I just know,” he said helpfully.

  When she was frustrated, she had a bad habit of hissing through her teeth. She caught herself doing it and stopped as if it had simply been an exhale. “Because you grew up in Oka. Where it was nice.”

  Watching her as if she were a wild beast about to pounce, he shifted, ever so slightly, in his chair. Like a real client would have. “Yeah.”

  “I’ve never heard of hardwired zhengs.”

  “There are a lot of strange things in the universe,” he said even more helpfully.

  Clients—and coworkers—sometimes assumed she was ignorant about machinery, because she looked like a nobody. She had no scars, no hard edges, no gears and gizmos to indicate she understood anything besides data entry. This job was, quite frankly, not the fast-paced adventure she’d expected when she’d agreed to a double life.

  But it turned out being a corporate spy was nothing but sales, manifests, and office politics, with the occasional secret meeting or manipulated trade deal thrown in for kicks. And while she might not be able to disassemble and reassemble ships, she had certainly learned to disassemble and reassemble people’s motives.

  There was a tiny chance this man really wanted to buy the parts on his list and it had nothing to do with Steven. There was a tiny chance she was casting aside a real client, one who seemed forthright, because of her suspicious mind.

  But who wanted to buy zheng parts? Or any gen ship parts?

  Someone from the Oka Conglomerate, which rarely did business with Trash Planet? Nope, everyone knew they were self-sufficient. Which left pirates and slavers.

  Whether he was a real client or not, she wasn’t comfortable with this sale, with how he’d found out about the ship, with anything.

  She wasn’t comfortable with the way he watched her with his dark eyes and his serene face. As if there was nothing she could do to unsettle him, which was a mark of someone who always got his way.

  Not today.

  “I’m not going to sell anything to you,” she decided. “I’ll have Axel see you out.”

  He tilted his head. “What? Why not?”

  “I just can’t,” she said, echoing him.

  He might have growled inaudibly. The hair in her ear tingled. He definitely frowned. “Individual Pandora, what if I told you that lives depend on these repairs?”

  “I would tell you I don’t have the parts you want and zhengs don’t have hardwired AIs and I don’t trust you.”

  He opened his mouth and then closed it. “You don’t trust me?”

  “Why is that a shock?” she said. “The business you’re in, buying parts for gen ships? You’re probably a pirate or worse. Or are you calling yourself ‘workforce recruitment’ these days? I bet nobody trusts you.”

  “You don’t trust me,” he repeated, and it wasn’t a question. A third of what he’d said today seemed to be him repeating things or awkward silence that failed. “You’re not going to try to overcharge me? Pressure me? Sell me junk and take my money?”

  “I’m a very good judge of character, and you, friend, are not telling me the truth. That’s sufficient for me to ask you to leave.” She stood. “If you please?”

  He rose, too, towering over her. But again, unlike most tall people, he didn’t scoot forward to menace her. As if it would work. “I don’t know what I said or did, but—”

  “Good day, Individual Caster.” She didn’t add Seventy-Five because she refused to believe that some slow-talking, honest man from the Oka Conglomerate who was trying to fix a gen ship and save lives had somehow found out that, all the way on the other side of the Obsidian Rim, a rare and precious zheng was being stripped for parts. It was a sob story designed to sway, and she wasn’t buying it.

  That was two of them who weren’t buying anything today.

  He didn’t leave immediately, but he did relocate himself to the doorway. “I thought, when I first saw you, that you’d be like everyone else. But you’re not, are you?”

  “That’s a very odd thing to say.” What did he assume everyone else was like? And why did she hope he’d just given her a compliment? “Do you always get what you want, Individual Caster? I’m sorry to end your streak.”

  “No,” he said. “I never do.” And that was the last thing he told her before he left her office.

  She resisted the urge to watch him on the external cameras. She’d never see him again, and now she needed to confirm whether Steven was telling people they had a zheng ship in an attempt to ruin her deal-making strategies.

  Chapter 3

  Lincoln mulled over what Briar Pandora had said all the way back to the box factory. Never in his life had someone’s lack of trust in him interfered with what he needed to accomplish. More, people trusted him too much, weighed him down, took him for granted…took him for everything.

  He wasn’t sure if he was fascinated or insulted, but there was no getting around the fact that he’d failed.

  He’d take full responsibility, of course, even if he had no idea what had pushed Briar to toss him out. The way she kept asking about someone named Steven Wat seemed significant.

  He mentioned it to Su the next day when he explained his failure in her quarters, which doubled as her office. Trash Planet interior space tended to be multiuse, what with the difficulties in constructing safe buildings in this environment. While they didn’t need domes to survive in the equatorial band, the buildings had to be industrial strength to withstand the extreme temperatures and the hail during the cold season.

  “Steven Wat. Name seems familiar
.” Su flicked through a few screens and landed on a holo of a light-skinned, small-eyed man with a receding hairline. “He’s just been promoted to the Tank Union Board after one of the directors died or something. They do promotions, not elections. It’s not democratic at all.”

  “Did Mighty come back?” he asked. “I could have used his help.”

  Su shook her head. “Not safe to take a cat there.”

  “Take a cat where?” inquired a booming voice from the doorway.

  Sourness fluttered across Su’s expression before she swiveled her chair to greet the newcomer. “Uncle Hoff. What are you doing here? Again. Gosh, I haven’t seen you in five whole days, and here I thought you had a union to run.”

  Mighty Mighty trotted past Hoff’s big, booted feet and to Lincoln, seated on the edge of Su’s bed. He leapt into Lincoln’s lap and kneaded his thighs. “I brought him,” the cat explained. “We need his help.”

  Su stared at the cat in a way Lincoln could tell wasn’t affectionate. To make up for it, he scratched between Mighty’s shoulder blades, which he knew the cat particularly liked. Su lowered her chin. “I said we didn’t need him.”

  “The cats say we do,” Mighty answered with a tail flip. As if that settled it, which Lincoln supposed it did. The cats were their own bosses and could get help from whomever they chose.

  “You should have told me you were pitching to Tank Union,” Hoff said. “I got a source inside. Could get you a deal.”

  “You have a… Since when?” Su said. Sometimes, when she was mad, the scar on her face turned red. Like right now. “Was it before or after the explosion that nearly killed me?”

  Lincoln had heard the gossip, of course: the poor maintenance choices by Hoff Abfall that had led to hiring the Tank Union to make repairs that had led to a deadly explosion that had led to Su leaving the Hazer Union and her uncle and setting up her own factory to recycle boxes and containers. Where Lincoln now worked, so he couldn’t complain.

  “After, toots. Long after.” Hoff gestured with one of his arms out in the hallway, and someone pushed a rolling chair into the room for him to sit in. He was a quarter of a meter taller than Lincoln, with a blustery, brash manner that made him seem even bigger. His wiry brown beard covered the lower half of his face so fully that sometimes it was hard to see his lips moving when he talked. “I’ve called my source on the inside to straighten this mess out. We’ll get these kitties what they need.”

  “Friend of cat, it is much appreciated,” Mighty said from Lincoln’s lap.

  “How did you know I didn’t get the sale?” Lincoln asked. “I haven’t seen you in a couple days.”

  Mighty’s eyes half-closed as Lincoln continued petting. “We just do.”

  It reminded Lincoln of the way he and Briar Pandora had smarted off to each other in the botched meeting. It was too bad they hadn’t been able to reach an agreement. He wouldn’t have minded getting to know someone who didn’t trust him so he could figure out why. Was she that good at detecting when someone was lying? Because he had been lying. But it wasn’t a damaging kind of lie.

  It was so peculiar he hadn’t stopped thinking about her since he’d left her office. She’d been plain and pale in her icy grey tunic, not a speck of Trash Planet’s murk anywhere on her. But she’d spoken with such polite certainty that he had no doubt she was observant and sharp. He couldn’t imagine anybody taking advantage of Briar Pandora or talking her into foolish acts that got her banished from her community.

  As if conjured by him puzzling over her, yet again, Briar Pandora herself appeared in the doorway behind Hoff, her brown hair slightly askew and her blue eyes wide. Today her spotless tunic was as pink as her fingernails. “I came as soon as I could, Hoff, but the shield won’t hide my chip long. What’s…”

  She froze and stared at Lincoln. He lifted a hand. “Individual Pandora.”

  “What’s he doing here?” Briar whirled on Hoff while Su watched the drama play out as if vexed by all of it. “Why are you associating with pirates and slavers? You know I draw the line there. If you want to recycle their toxics, fine, but I’m not—”

  “Not a pirate. I work for Su,” Lincoln interrupted. “I really did grow up in Oka.” Briar met his eyes in astonishment, and heat flushed through him as he fumbled for something else to say. “It was nice.”

  Her gaze dropped from his face to his lap. This was about to get interesting, and not in the way that a woman noticing his lap tended to get interesting. “That’s a cat.”

  “I am indeed,” Mighty said with a pleased wiggle. “I admire your work ethic, Briar Pandora. I am happy to invite you to the trust circle.”

  Hoff held out two of his arms as Briar stumbled backward, keeping her from falling over. Her immaculate, wide-legged pants flopped around her ankles. Hoff rolled his chair across the small room and seated the young woman beside Lincoln on the bed.

  Briar stared at Mighty as if the humans in the room had disappeared. “That…that…that…”

  “I am a sentient cat, you are amazed, you feel suddenly rewarded by life in a way you never expected, and you think I’m beautiful,” Mighty supplied. “I’ll also accept pretty, gorgeous, silky, lovely, flawless.”

  Lincoln had witnessed the cats introduce themselves to people several times now, and every person and cat were different. Pumpkin tended to be an asshole and Mighty tended to get overexcited about another human joining his fan club. Boson Higgs would give a single snort and prance away while Queen Bea comforted and headbutted the stricken human.

  But there were some common denominators. Everything would be okay, because the cats didn’t make mistakes in who they trusted. And Briar was going to want to pet the cat before this was over.

  “Strange things in the universe,” Lincoln told her and then wanted to punch himself. He’d said that yesterday, too, so he planned his next sentences more carefully. “There’s a gen ship. The cats on it evolved. They’re the ones who need the zheng parts, but obviously I couldn’t tell you that.”

  “You lied,” Briar exclaimed, jittering so much she shook the bed. “I knew you were lying. Knew it.”

  Lincoln shrugged. “Yeah. Sorry.”

  “Do you know Steven Wat?” she demanded, grabbing his arm. Her fancy fingernails had some unexpected pokiness, even though his work coveralls. It made him think about how he’d asked her about poking yesterday in such a stupid way. “That rat face. Did you tell me the truth about that? Have you given me drugs? Hoff, is this for real? Why are you all sitting there and watching me like I’m a holo show? How can you... Oh, wow.”

  “I’ve calmed her down,” Mighty said, right before Briar leaned against Lincoln with a soft sigh. Her pink-clad arm and breast pressed into him and her head leaned on his shoulder. She smelled like a hydroponics bay. Flowers, greenery, with a touch of the harshness in Trash Planet’s air. It was pleasant.

  “You’re not supposed to push things on people without them asking,” Lincoln chided the cat. “It’s not right.”

  “I do feel better.” Briar inched a hand onto Lincoln’s thigh, and he swallowed, hard, because he knew what she really wanted. “Can I?”

  “Oh, please do,” Mighty said in a sultry voice. “Lincoln, put your arm around her.”

  “I can’t just get all personal,” Lincoln grumbled. It did seem like she might pitch into his lap at any minute as she tentatively stroked Mighty’s shiny black fur, but she was already distraught. She didn’t need some guy she hardly knew wrapping his body around hers.

  Su checked her wrist chrono. “How long is this going to take? I do have to recycle some damn boxes at some point today.”

  Mighty began to purr, either because Su’s impatience amused him or Briar was good at pets. “Briar, dear new friend, we are going to need you to sell us that ship.”

  “I can’t sell it whole,” she said in a dreamy voice. “We’re half done with the inventory and I went ahead and uploaded it to the scraproll. It’s going to bring in more profit than I estima
ted. We have people bidding all over.”

  “You can have it back, or almost all of it, to sell again,” Lincoln suggested. “We only need a few things, but we don’t want people to know what those are.”

  “Can you imagine, I didn’t get a spot on the board?” Briar continued. “All that money, coming in because of me.” She leaned across Lincoln’s lap to get closer to Mighty, nuzzling his fur. Lincoln stared at the ceiling. Briar was soft-looking, and she smelled good, and she distrusted him, which was intriguing, and he didn’t want to get intrigued by her that way. “If I were to sell you the ship at only three times the price, I’d get fired and Hoff would be upset.”

  “So she’s your mole,” Su said to Hoff, eyebrow arched. “You have people in other unions and factories for what reason?”

  Hoff spread all three hands. “To get the best deals and any head’s up. You know. It’s a bristler eat bristler world out there.”

  “You could have been trying to improve Tank Union’s ethics, encouraging them to upgrade their contractor requirements, and avoid industrial accidents that kill people, and instead, you just want to get deals?” Su ground out. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  When Su put it like that, it did sound selfish. How would her uncle respond?

  “We’ve improved contractor quality by twenty percent,” Briar mused. “And response times during the cold season by thirty overall. But I just thought we should. Hoff didn’t tell me to.”

  Hoff pointed at her as if his finger were a gun. “Ah-ha. How do you know I didn’t want you to? I pick good people, am I right? The cats approve of Briar.”

  “Yes, we do,” Mighty said, in his drunk petting voice. “I’m going to show her alllllll over the Catamaran.”

  “Who’s your mole in my factory?” Su snapped at her uncle. “Tell me now or—”

  “It’s Javier,” Hoff said.

  “No, it’s not, and I won’t fire him so he has to come work for you,” Su said. Javier was Su’s staff medic, a very old man who cured more things with what he called holistic medicine than he did with medical tech and super-expensive nanobots. Not that Lincoln had gotten sick since he’d been here, but he’d flown Javier back and forth to the Catamaran. “Never mind. I’ll find out my own way.”