Chapter 8

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Sonya had chosen a strange hour to visit the Galleria. She’d rather naively decided to visit the place at the witching hour, and naturally nothing was open. It reminded her of when she’d gone to college; she spent many long nights alone in the food court of the student union building, nose-deep in law books and popping caffeine pills to crowbar some lasting knowledge into her brain.

Now she stood in the same kind of place: chairs set upside-down on the dining tables, a disinterested janitor at a distance brooming up french fries and the plastic wrappers of drinking straws, a misbehaving neon light on the marquee of a pizza restaurant that made a baritone buzzing sound that was somehow soothing. Almost all of the storefronts are shuttered by rolling steel grids. Inside, lone fluorescent security lights and the faint glow of soft-serve soda machines cast gothic silhouettes of the furniture inside.

She liked it here: the library atmosphere combined with the ability to smoke, the solitude and the pleasant hum of air scrubbers and soda machines in the open space. It probably stirred some comforting pseudo-memories of her time in the womb. Nero doesn’t know anything about psychology, but it sounded right.

She felt a little stupid for coming here, though. She didn’t even realize what time it was when she came down here fondling her cash card and found the Galleria a ghost town, tumbleweeds of cheeseburger wrappers crossing her path. She wondered if Lieutenant Castle was trying to make an ass out of her by suggesting a shopping trip around the commercial sector. Nah. But he probably figured she could do with a walk.

Standing outside the only store open at this hour—the 24-hour Super-K— with a bag filled with a pair of disposable lighters and a carton of cigarettes, she finally started to reach a state of equilibrium, both physically and emotionally. She let out a yawn so exaggerated her ribs ached and she said “fuck” in breathless wonder. For a while she stood there, debating mentally which addiction to obey: her desire for sleep or her itching six-month jones for nicotine. She decided that she’d better light up now that the thought’s begun bouncing around in her head, or she’dsleep like shit. She hauled a chair off a nearby table, opened her bag and sat down to hack into her stash.

“Hey.”

Sonya looked to see the stick-monkey she’d met briefly in Medical a few hours ago. Pinhead, or something. The one who was staring at her with bug-eyes. He was a scruffy scrap of a man, the kind who looks best with a day’s growth on his face, no more and no less. He clearly didn’t put much effort into his appearance, with a hairstyle that defines “low-maintenance”. Nero guessed that he climbed out of the shower, took two passes with a comb to plaster his hair straight back and let fate decide where it may fall when it dries. Right now, it had settled into an uneven part up the middle, with a wicked cowlick bulging up from the back of his head, probably matted that way from sweat and his flight helmet.

Nero jammed a cigarette into her mouth and gave him a subtle scowling “can’t you see I’m smoking” look, but he continued to stare at her, awaiting permission to ask his damn question. She just wanted to be left alone right now.

“Where did you come from?” she asked the flyboy.

“The tram over there. From Administration.” The pilot motioned vaguely in the opposite direction. She was a little surprised now that someone had crept up on her. She could hear footfalls from a hundred meters down either corridor at this time of night. She must really have been drifting. The pilot showed her the palms of his hands in a brief “I come in peace” gesture, but she was skeptical.

“I’m Ian. Ian Troy. But everyone calls me Pinball.” Nero wondered idly if there was any irony in the notion that a guy named Troy had to spend his career flying a ship called a Trojan, then decided it’d only be irony if he was flying a Spartan.

“What do you want?”

“Nothing. I just was on my way—“ but he broke off his thought in mid-stream. “I was going to ask you something, but never mind.”

Nero rolled her eyes and gets a lighter. “Ah c’mon. What’s the worst that could happen?”

“The prevailing thought ends with you twisting my head off.”

“You’ve got about two minutes before I finish this and go to sleep for about eighteen hours. Now I guess that means you have to ask yourself if you feel lucky.”

“I heard what the doctor said about you. Your neck, especially. I know, I probably should have waited outside but…Jesus, don’t you think your C.O. is right? Should you really be—“

“I’m where I want to be. If I thought for a second I couldn’t do this job anymore I would stop.”

The pilot put his hands up again to make it clear he’s not trying to provoke a fight. “No, I understand that. I don’t mean to say that you couldn’t, just that you don’t have to.”

“Yes, I do.” The sound of her voice was like the snap of a hanged man’s noose, sudden and final. She started walking back towards the tram to the Marine barracks. She wanted to get to sleep finally and return to her favorite nightmares.