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  Wood’s smile thinned in anger. “Didn’t you just have a nice little drink, Cesare?” he said, sliding a glance at the café Cesare had just left. Apparently the fecker had been spying on him and the spacebabe. “That chic you were talking to must’ve sucked it right out of your mind. Can’t say I’m surprised. She—”

  Cesare wasn’t going to listen to any more of this shite. “She’s not here, and she’s not making me happy, so she doesn’t matter, right?” he said between his teeth.

  Woods looked like he was going to keep after it for a minute. Then a smug glint appeared in his eyes, and he laughed softly, as if at a private joke. “Come on, I’ll take you to your habsuites,” he said, still chuckling. He reached out to clap a hand on Cesare’s arm.

  This fecker touches me one more time, Cesare thought, I’m going to have to pound him into bloody chunks of rat food, StarLine sec or not. At the last instant, he rotated to the side, neatly dodging what was surely meant to be a hard blow. Then he moved in close, forcing Woods to step back. Looming over the shorter man, he smiled down at him. “We can find our own way,” he said. Without another word, he jerked his head at his team, shouldered past Woods and strode away.

  “I’ll be keeping my eye out for you!” Woods called out cheerily behind them.

  Briggs hurried to walk next to him. “Let the games begin,” he murmured.

  “No shite,” Cesare said.

  Executive Habsuite, Eris

  Victoria Ross watched the video screen before her turn neutral gray. The maintenance robot she sent to spy on Max and Bianca had cut its feed now that Max had moved out of range. With a few taps on her console, she filed the bot’s com to her surveillance cache in the DataCloud.

  She was satisfied. Everything was moving into place. There were three main obstacles between her and her goal, but each of them would soon be eliminated.

  The first was the president of StarLine. That problem had just resolved itself by leaving for Earth. And once her husband’s ship was set on its trajectory, it could not possibly turn around and get back to Mars in less than a year.

  Of course, even if Max had stayed on Eris, he might not have noticed or cared what she was planning. The man hadn’t bothered with anything beyond his engineering in years. He never understood just what his creation had become—the vital heart of the Martian economy. Ever since the elevator went up forty years ago, Martian companies had become entirely dependent on it for the cheap, reliable transport of their goods into space. Heavy payload shuttles that could climb out of the Martian gravity well were all but obsolete. That meant that whoever held the elevator held the chokepoint of interplanetary trade.

  Today, depriving one company of StarLine’s services would doom it. Shutting down the elevator, even for a short time, would be catastrophic for the planet’s financial system. Add to that the fact that Eris was also a fortress with its own army of security staff, and Victoria, the ruler of Eris, had an unassailable position of power.

  Not that the full extent of her power was officially acknowledged. That was her second problem. But it was soon to end.

  In a few weeks, she would be hosting a meeting of the Mars Business Consortium on Eris. Powerful business leaders, the Secretary General of the Martian Assembly, and several Assembly Delegates would all be in attendance. Victoria had slept with most of the men and a good number of the women at one point or another over the last several years. That, and her large stockpile of debts and blackmail material, gave her an edge already. With the power of the elevator to back her up, her guests would not dare refuse her suggestions about how to run things on Mars. At the end of this jaunt up to Eris, the government would be hers. She would be the one to dictate policy to the Assembly. She would be the one to veto the Secretary General’s decisions. It was all but finished.

  Which left only one problem to deal with—Max’s spawn, Bianca.

  The sullen little station rat she had dismissed as unimportant fifteen years ago had actually begun trying to undermine Victoria’s authority in StarLine, the sneaking kit. Insinuating herself into Eris station, starting to wield the StarLine shares she had inherited from her mother... It was all quite annoying. She began drumming her fingers irritably on the silk upholstered arm of her chair.

  Victoria had spent decades fighting to claim her rightful place as the most powerful, most desirable woman on Mars. The very thought that some stupid little girl would dare try to steal even a sliver, a scrap of her hard-earned glory was intolerable. But at least the pallid, scrawny creature would be dead soon.

  Feh. Thinking about Bianca always cranked her up. Only one thing could soothe her when she got in this temper. She tapped her vid control sharply with one lacquered fingernail, shifting the screen into mirror mode. Her reflection shimmered in front of her, and she leaned forward, studying it anxiously. Rich golden hair. Heavy-lidded blue eyes. Classically perfect features. All still as exquisite as nature, and a touch of surgery, had made her.

  She and that odious girl could not look more different, she thought. Bianca resembled her mother, a frail wisp of a woman who had died of a rare cancer. Pity the daughter wouldn’t be so obliging.

  She turned her face this way and that, searching for the faintest line, or signs of tired skin. Ana Ross had been seventy-three when she died, nearly the same age Victoria was now. Perhaps, she considered, it was time for a new Correction treatment.

  Correction was a complicated and time consuming procedure, but well worth it. An absolute necessity, in fact. No human could survive the deadly solar radiation that bathed Mars for any length of time without it. By correcting the genetic damage inflicted on human cells by time and radiation, the treatment prevented most chronic diseases and cancers, and more than doubled the human lifespan. Best of all, it drastically slowed the ageing process. Children on Mars grew up very slowly, and adults barely aged at all.

  Victoria herself looked no older than she had forty years ago. But perhaps she would have another Correction anyway. No point in stinting on beauty.

  She leaned back and let her eyes drift over the mirror vidscreen again. It was framed in carved and gilded wood, like an antique looking glass from some ancient palace on Earth. She took in the picture she made in the mirror, encircled by gold like a jewel in a setting, and felt her mood ease.

  The vidscreen chose that moment to interrupt her reverie with a demure chime. She caught herself wrinkling her brow up in a frown. Carefully, she smoothed it away and answered the com.

  Javier Woods appeared on her screen, his usual disturbing smile in place. As always, she had to stifle a wince at her sec chief’s appearance. His dark skinned face and heavy black hair were handsome in a brutal way, she supposed. She could have nothing ugly near her, after all. But handsome or not, he was still an Earther, and he had an Earther’s short, broad frame and thick, rolling muscles instead of the long, slender lines of those born in the low gravity of Mars. He always reminded her why some of the more vulgar Martians called Earthers “squats.”

  At least he was useful. He just had to be kept strictly in line. “So, Javier,” she said, “what do you have for me?”

  “Well, boss,” he said in his obnoxious Earther accent, “Cesare Chan and his legal team have just arrived.”

  “Yes, I already know Chan is here,” she answered him a touch impatiently. “He has an appointment with my personal assistant in an hour.”

  Woods looked amused. “That’s going to be kind of tough to arrange, since I just tossed your PA out that air lock like you told me to. Remember? Couple hours ago? The bloke who screamed like a puta and pissed himself?”

  Ay, she remembered. A slight smile returned to her face. “I was referring to my new personal assistant. Ron, or Ren, something like that.”

  “I forgot to ask, what you want to dust that last bloke for anyway? Just a jack and a laugh?”

  No, unfortunat
ely her last PA’s disposal had been business as well as pleasure. That idiot Shrivatva had been scheming to sell Aurora Project data to a rival of hers. Not only had he nearly put valuable bioware in the hands of Victoria’s enemies, but he had risked seriously annoying the secretive Aurora Project scientists. Victoria might be one of their patrons, but even she was wary of crossing them, at least for now. Their research was simply too dangerous to treat lightly.

  Not that she intended to discuss that with Woods. The shrewd light in his black eyes told her that he already knew or suspected too much as it was. She shot the Earther a flat look. “It’s nothing that concerns you. Now then, you met Cesare Chan in person?”

  “Ay, matter of fact I did.”

  “And what were your impressions?”

  Javier shrugged. “Martians all seem the same to me. Except you of course, boss.”

  Victoria gazed at him steadily, saying nothing. She waited until his smirk had faded away and he had gone a little pale. “Have you put together that file on him yet?” she said.

  “I’m sending it to you right now,” Woods said sullenly, and tapped the data stream to one of her personal DataCloud chambers.

  “Give me a summary.” She had done business with old Chan before, but his offspring had escaped her notice until recently. Best to find out exactly what she was dealing with.

  “He’s the second son of Shen Chan, groomed to take over the mines from early on. Older brother showed no interest in mining—became a pilot. Mother and younger half-brother out prospecting in the Asteroid Belt.”

  Not anymore, they aren’t, Victoria thought idly. That much she had discovered already.

  “Anyway,” Woods continued. “This Cesare went to school at New Beijing, then kicked around the Outback mines for the last decade. Mostly kept a low profile. He has a criminal record, though.”

  “Interesting. What for?” Victoria said.

  “Stupid shite. Got pinched in a couple wild stunts in Pavonis, some dust-ups in the mining habs. The biggest thing, though, was pulling a jack-and-joyride with the personal rover of an Assembly delegate. Went on parole and paid a hefty fine for that one. Seems old Shen Chan pretty much gave up on him after that. Didn’t stop the kit from trying to take over the old man’s place, though. He’s been making a play for RedIce for the past few years.”

  “Yes, well, he can’t have it.” She needed it herself. RedIce had a singular asset hidden away that could cause her tremendous problems if she didn’t contain it. Once she extracted what she wanted from the company, she would liquidate it and be done with the matter, but until then there were nagging loose ends to settle.

  “So, do you want me to put the thump on Chan for you?”

  “Once again, Javier, there is no need to use a club when a scalpel will do,” she said absently.

  “I was going to use a shock rod,” he murmured.

  Victoria ignored him, thinking for a moment. There was no way young Chan could prevent her from taking over his father’s company, but his determination to fight the inevitable might become a nuisance. How best to put an end to it?

  With a few touches, she accessed her new file on Cesare Chan, pulling up a stillvid of him in one corner of her screen. It showed him standing in some Outback mining pit, his head tipped back slightly in laughter. A good-looking man, she thought. Very good-looking indeed.

  She smiled to herself. A new avenue toward taking care of this little RedIce problem had just opened up before her, one that promised to be extremely pleasurable. She would have to set up a personal interview with M’Chan, she decided. By the time their private negotiations were through, he would be begging to hand his shares over to her.

  “He can’t cause me any real trouble,” she said to Woods. “He probably just wants to scare up some more cash for himself. I’ll throw him a bone or two, and send him along.” She waved her hand. “Enough about Chan. Now, tell me about our newest wave of security recruits.”

  “Don’t you worry, I got a few nice thumpers lined up for Eris sec. Here,” he said, and tapped some files over to her.

  “A lot of Earthers you found,” she murmured, scanning through the data.

  “But screening prospective hires for planet of origin goes against the StarLine ethical guidelines,” Woods said in an ironic tone.

  “I suppose Earthers can be useful in jobs like this.” Very tiresome having to go through the formalities of hiring them, however. Soon she could return to buying them wholesale from Earther prisons, just as she and her partners had done before the Martian government shut down the slave trade in an attack of sanctimony ten years ago.

  That ridiculous squeamishness about Earther livestock would be one of the first things she did away with when she was in charge. Until then, she supposed she would have to bulk up her private army the old fashioned way. She filed Woods’s data for review later. “That will be all,” she said, and moved to end the com.

  “About Bianca,” Woods said.

  Victoria’s hand stilled. “What about her?”

  The sec chief’s habitual fake smile spread wider, showing his teeth. “She’s gone down to the surface, ay? Might be dangerous. Anything can happen down there. She could get blown up, or stranded, or just disappear and never be seen again. Maybe I could go down there and take care of her for you. I wouldn’t mind.” His tongue flicked out to wet his lips.

  For a brief moment, Victoria considered unleashing Woods on Bianca. It would be highly amusing, and nothing less than the wretched little tab deserved for getting in her way. But, no. Woods was good enough at eliminating nobodies, but Max Ross’s daughter required a little more finesse.

  Besides, she had already set her own plan in motion.

  Waiting for Bianca at the bottom of the elevator was an agent with a medical injector full of a very special poison—a nanobot solution programmed to weaken the heart muscle. A few days after landing on the planet, poor, sickly little Bianca would be dead of apparent “space stress,” a condition sometimes brought on by sudden shifts in gravity.

  She said, “Bianca has already been taken care of,” and ended the com, replacing Woods’s crestfallen face with her mirror program. As her reflection shimmered in front of her once again, she reached for her brush and began to smooth over her hair contentedly.

  In less than a week, Bianca would be nothing but an obituary in the tabloids. Meanwhile, she would schedule a Correction, and a session in bed with that handsome miner beast.

  Ay, she thought as she brushed, that was just what she needed to relieve her stress before the Eris party. Soon, her hand would be on the threads of power for the entire Sol. She ought to be at her peak when the moment came to pull them.

  Chapter Two

  Secrets

  Pavonis Elevator Terminal

  Bianca stood in the viewing blister of her elevator car as it descended toward its bottom terminal, and looked down onto one of the most magnificent sights on Mars—the great volcano of Pavonis Mons. Almost directly below her, a sheer cliff dropped five kilometers down to the purple-shadowed bowl of the extinct caldera. The huge, clear domes of habitat tents clustered around the volcano like bubbles on the rim of a cup. Inside the tents, buildings and trees glowed with living colors under the star-shot Martian sky.

  Well, it’s not Eris, but Pavonis isn’t so bad, all things considered.

  The viewing blister went dark as the car slid gently into the docking sleeve on the southern rim of the volcano. “Welcome to Pavonis. Please prepare to disembark,” said a simulated voice. Down on the main floor of the car, the passenger lock slid open.

  Bianca took the lift down to the lock and filed out of the car with the other travelers, just one in the crowd. She reached up to touch her radiation cap and visor, making sure her hair and upper face were securely veiled by the gold-colored material. The cap was intended to pro
tect against any radiation that got through the habitat tent shields, but for unwilling tabloid quarry like her, it was just as useful for concealing identity.

  At the bottom of the ramp, she steeled herself. Time for the security scan. The bloody, make-you-want-to-chew-your-own-foot-off security scan.

  Taking a breath, she plunged into the stream of people moving through the sec corridor. An array of sensors began to scan every centimeter of her body from every conceivable angle as she passed through, looking for toxins, weapons, or anything else remotely dangerous.

  It was a routine she had followed countless times before and had never gotten used to. The sensation of thousands of eyes stripping her down and measuring her always scratched at her nerves like broken plaz.

  She tried to let her mind drift as she walked along, concentrating on the quiet and privacy waiting for her in her own suite of rooms in the StarLine compound. But when she reached the end of the corridor, she saw something that snapped her back to awareness with an unpleasant jolt. Standing like a gate guard at the door to the main terminal was the tall, shining white box of a biodraw station.

  An older, dark-skinned woman with a standard medical injector in one hand sat at the station’s console. She looked up with a polished smile as Bianca slowly moved closer. “Please push up your sleeve and place your arm in the sling for the biodraw.” She motioned Bianca to the opening in the side of the station where the array of nanosamplers waited, poised to extract her blood, tissue and biodata.

  Bianca stared at the tech, knocked off balance by unwelcome memories of cold machines, frowning doctors, endless tests. “What’s this all about?” she asked, keeping her arms at her sides.

  “It’s a new addition to our sec procedures. StarLine Med needs to take a biosample to test for space stress, and for any Earth pathogens that might spread into the population.”