The Peyti Crisis: A Retrieval Artist Novel: Book Five of the Anniversary Day Saga (Retrieval Artist series 12) by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Authors: Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Tags: Fiction
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the Peyti lawyers as lawyers, not as prisoners.
She’d heard that officials in Armstrong had already reprogrammed their Android guards to accept no Peyti lawyers anywhere in any facility. She’d also heard that Armstrong was closing its Port to the Peyti—too damn late, in her opinion.
Someone should have barred the Peyti decades ago.
But that was all dust on the tracks now. Nothing she could do. Nothing anyone could do.
She’d finish her assignment, and head back to Glenn Station, just like she was ordered to do.
And any Peyti there, lawyer or not, non-clone or not, had better stay out of her way.
Because she was done.
No one was going to try to destroy her home again.
And she knew she wasn’t alone.
If the authorities couldn’t stop these people, she would—one way, or the other. She’d stop them. Whether it was “legal” or not.
TEN
BARTHOLOMEW NYQUIST BUTTONED his last clean shirt. He looked at the pile of laundry at the bottom of his closet and grimaced. He could set the laundry for a quick nano-clean, which got the smells out of everything, but left a residue that always made him crawly, as if the damn nanobots were moving around his skin like a dozen tiny aliens, or he could wash everything later, wasting water, and expending lots of energy.
He ran a hand through his wet hair, and glanced around the darkened bedroom. His apartment was small and cramped, but the building had some amenities. If he wanted to pay the building staff, they would do the laundry for him. Of course, that took organization as well, and he didn’t have the mental energy for that.
So he pulled off his clean shirt and set it on a chair, so that the laundry—which smelled of personal funk, sweat, and every stupid person he had encountered in the last week—wouldn’t brush against the fabric. Then he carried the pile to the nanobasket, and set the cleaning program to start in four hours.
By then, Noelle DeRicci would be awake.
He glanced at her as he grabbed his shirt. She was sprawled kitty-corner on his narrow bed, her hand on his pillow, her curly black hair covering her face.
She had shown up at his place at two a.m., claiming to need a night off. He hadn’t had the heart to tell her that night had passed long ago, and they were into morning now. She had brought real hamburgers, still steaming hot from the expensive meat-place down the block, and waved them at him.
He didn’t need a bribe to spend time with her, and he had told her that, but she claimed she needed food.
As gaunt as she was looking, he believed it. He wondered how many meals she had skipped since Anniversary Day. He knew she’d been trying to put her life back in some kind of order, and then a group of Peyti clones had tried to blow up the entire Moon.
She had stopped that by acting quickly and probably illegally, saving millions of lives. Still, the thousands of lives lost weighed on her. She hadn’t thought of the locations outside of the domes—the Growing Pits, the mining facilities. The casualties there had been real and heartbreaking, and the press had been reporting on those, as representative of what could have happened to the entire Moon.
This place was jittery— he was jittery—expecting another thing to happen each and every moment of each and every day.
He had no idea how DeRicci felt. She was the Chief of Security for the United Domes of the Moon, and after the Anniversary Day attacks, pretty much the only living representative of the United Domes government.
Until just a few years ago, the domes had been independent entities, ruled by their mayors and city councils. A series of crises convinced the Moon’s first Governor-General, Celia Alfreda, that the Moon needed an overall government to band together for security and other projects. She had pushed that agenda for nearly twenty years before it became real. She served as the first Governor-General, only to be assassinated six months ago in the middle
She’d heard that officials in Armstrong had already reprogrammed their Android guards to accept no Peyti lawyers anywhere in any facility. She’d also heard that Armstrong was closing its Port to the Peyti—too damn late, in her opinion.
Someone should have barred the Peyti decades ago.
But that was all dust on the tracks now. Nothing she could do. Nothing anyone could do.
She’d finish her assignment, and head back to Glenn Station, just like she was ordered to do.
And any Peyti there, lawyer or not, non-clone or not, had better stay out of her way.
Because she was done.
No one was going to try to destroy her home again.
And she knew she wasn’t alone.
If the authorities couldn’t stop these people, she would—one way, or the other. She’d stop them. Whether it was “legal” or not.
TEN
BARTHOLOMEW NYQUIST BUTTONED his last clean shirt. He looked at the pile of laundry at the bottom of his closet and grimaced. He could set the laundry for a quick nano-clean, which got the smells out of everything, but left a residue that always made him crawly, as if the damn nanobots were moving around his skin like a dozen tiny aliens, or he could wash everything later, wasting water, and expending lots of energy.
He ran a hand through his wet hair, and glanced around the darkened bedroom. His apartment was small and cramped, but the building had some amenities. If he wanted to pay the building staff, they would do the laundry for him. Of course, that took organization as well, and he didn’t have the mental energy for that.
So he pulled off his clean shirt and set it on a chair, so that the laundry—which smelled of personal funk, sweat, and every stupid person he had encountered in the last week—wouldn’t brush against the fabric. Then he carried the pile to the nanobasket, and set the cleaning program to start in four hours.
By then, Noelle DeRicci would be awake.
He glanced at her as he grabbed his shirt. She was sprawled kitty-corner on his narrow bed, her hand on his pillow, her curly black hair covering her face.
She had shown up at his place at two a.m., claiming to need a night off. He hadn’t had the heart to tell her that night had passed long ago, and they were into morning now. She had brought real hamburgers, still steaming hot from the expensive meat-place down the block, and waved them at him.
He didn’t need a bribe to spend time with her, and he had told her that, but she claimed she needed food.
As gaunt as she was looking, he believed it. He wondered how many meals she had skipped since Anniversary Day. He knew she’d been trying to put her life back in some kind of order, and then a group of Peyti clones had tried to blow up the entire Moon.
She had stopped that by acting quickly and probably illegally, saving millions of lives. Still, the thousands of lives lost weighed on her. She hadn’t thought of the locations outside of the domes—the Growing Pits, the mining facilities. The casualties there had been real and heartbreaking, and the press had been reporting on those, as representative of what could have happened to the entire Moon.
This place was jittery— he was jittery—expecting another thing to happen each and every moment of each and every day.
He had no idea how DeRicci felt. She was the Chief of Security for the United Domes of the Moon, and after the Anniversary Day attacks, pretty much the only living representative of the United Domes government.
Until just a few years ago, the domes had been independent entities, ruled by their mayors and city councils. A series of crises convinced the Moon’s first Governor-General, Celia Alfreda, that the Moon needed an overall government to band together for security and other projects. She had pushed that agenda for nearly twenty years before it became real. She served as the first Governor-General, only to be assassinated six months ago in the middle
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