One's Aspect to the Sun by Sherry D. Ramsey Read Free Book Online Page A

one,” Rei would point out. Viss would merely grin and shrug.
    He nodded towards the notebug as I approached the hatch.
    “It must be for you,” he said. “It's already scanned all the rest of us. Wait a second,” he said, holding up a hand to halt my approach before I got close enough for the bug to scan me. “I could take care of it if you want.”
    He opened his palm and I saw what he held—a bug scrambler, commonly known as a “zapper.” They were illegal tech; they scrambled the bug's message and the ID implant tags of anyone it had scanned. They also eradicated the bug's memory cache so that it couldn't return home and was essentially “lost.”
    This wasn't the first time Viss had suggested something outside the strictly legal, and I knew it wouldn't be the last. In the five years I'd known him, I'd come to suspect that his former careers had included time in the military and on both sides of the law enforcement line. I also knew that in any situation, Viss would do what he considered “right,” and on those kinds of decisions, we always saw eye-to-eye.
    I considered it, I confess. But the appearance of a second message so soon was unusual. PrimeCorp had docilely accepted my ignoring them the past few years. I was curious to see what had changed.
    “That's all right, Viss, I'll take this one.” I didn't mention the zapper. “Who knows, it could be something interesting.”
    He snorted a laugh and I stepped up for the scan. The tiny 'bot settled delicately on my forearm over the spot where my implant lay, ran the initial ID scan and buzzed, “Luna Paxon?” Tiny antennae sprouted from the top, twitching as it waited for my response.
    If it had been a real person I might have bothered to make the point that my name was Luta, not Luna, and that it had the last name wrong, too , but no-one ever bothers to fix bug software, and it had already identified me from the scan. The voice confirmation was just a redundancy. I rolled my eyes at Viss and said, “ Konfirmi,” and the notebug direct-transferred the message to my implant. I felt the usual small zap, like a shock of static electricity, to signal the end of the message, and then the thing flitted away. Trust PrimeCorp to go to ridiculous lengths to preserve its “privacy.” They could have just sent me another e-note.
    Viss watched the thing disappear past a battered insystem shuttle docked beside us, then opened the hatch and gestured me in ahead of him.
    “Do you want the good news first, or the bad news?” he asked as we entered the bridge. Yuskeya and Baden were both there, and looked up as we arrived.
    “I'll take the bad, I guess, unless you're going to tell me you couldn't get the plasma intakes cleaned. I don't want to hear that at all, now or later.”
    Viss grinned. “No, that's done and she's ready to take on the Split as far as I'm concerned. Actually, that was the good news. The bad news is that I don't think we should head into the Split with a full load of cargo on board. I don't know what plans you've already made, but I think the forward pod should be clear when we get to that point.”
    “Is there something wrong with the skip drive?”
    “No, no, it's not that. The drive is fine. I just ran a new diagnostic I got from a friend who's had . . . experience with the Split. The runs seem safer when the field stresses are lowest, and that means reducing the weight load. Is it a problem?”
    I shook my head. “No, we weren't going to carry a full cargo load anyway, and we'll be offloading some before we get to GI 182. I just wondered why. Baden can tell the steves to keep Pod One clear. Thanks for the input.” Viss had some questionable friends, but sometimes they came in handy.
    I headed for my cabin, wondering what the PrimeCorp message might say. When I outloaded it to my datapad, I saw that the tone had changed considerably from the previous missive.
     
    Received: from [205152.59.68] PrimeCorp Main Division
    NOTEBUG-V.: