Does A Coin Really Have Two Sides?
11 Sep 2021User319792
The woman never called me by my name. In the two years I'd spent as an extension of my father's Imperial Slave Contract, I was never anything more than "girl." It was the same with her husband and son. At most, I was my father's daughter, and even that was to no one but the other slaves contracted to the woman. The first person to address me by my name after arriving at the woman's home from our home across the blue, other then my own father, was the man in the black suit- when we'd arrived at Wedge Market. Cadence, he said, you're home. I remembered looking at the mailslot, after hearing him say so, and watching an Anaconda crack its cockpit canopy on the way out before seeing it returning as we turned the corner from the launching pad into the flight control tower offices. There was a message waiting for me in Hobbes' captain's quarters when I returned from al-Din Landing's outfitting station. The man in the black suit wanted a quick briefing on my activities since we'd last spoken at Van Maanen's Star. In truth, it's been a lot of nothing really; the daily ins and outs of a pilot.
Coral's face appeared on my holofac screen and the man in the black suit shortly afterward.
"Cadence, I want that report in just a moment. Coral, I need a report from you about your activities in Cubeo."
I looked at Coral, my eye-lids lowered in question. She pushed her chin upward, her mouth curling into a recurve bow, and looked away quickly before looking back at me. The man in the black suit looked back over at me and smiled, awaiting my report. Coral raised her eyebrows, her lower lip quivering, and looked away again.
"I haven't gotten into much, to be honest. I've been picking up entry permits into various systems, hoping I might find some useful information that we wouldn't find anywhere else. I got into a little trouble with a mission that called for me to destroy the power-supply for a research vessel's turrets bu-"
Coral's head dropped as her eyes opened wide as the sound exploded from the mouth of the man in the black suit.
"WHAT!?"
Coral turned away again, doing a poor job at holding in a laugh. The man in the black suit was looking at something running in circles below his holofac sensors, the horror showing on his face. It was confusing and I tried not to laugh, the only way for me to do so being to carry on as if I hadn't been interrupted.
"and I did a few political assassination missions to get myself a permanent permit for access to LTT 198."
The man in the black suit seemed to collect himself, taking a long, slow, deep breath before looking back at me.
"Ok. I suppose these things have to be done. That LTT 198 permit might become increasingly useful as Torval's new company establishes itself."
He looked away and toward Coral, who was continuing to avoid any eye contact with either of us as she chewed on her lower lip, fighting off the laugh that I could see coming up, every now and again, out of the corner of my eye. He looked back toward me, taking a quick glance back at Coral out of the corner of his eye before focusing his attention on me.
"Cadence, please try to show a little more judgement about what kind of jobs you're taking. Access is useful, but it isn't as useful as picking up a reputation as someone that disrupts the normal flow of business, including how businesses are protecting themselves."
I squinted and raised my head, turning it slightly to the side so I was looking at the man in the black suit from the corner of my eye. Coral looked to be busying herself with something.
"Are you lecturing me about interfering with people's private economic exercise? Didn't you basically kidnap me and abduct my dad from some family in Cubeo 3 that owned my dad's Imperial Slavery Contract?"
I heard what sounded like a laugh explode from Coral before her comms went silent and she stood up and walked away from her sensors. The man in the black suit shut one eye and he winced, his open eye looking upward and his shoulder dropping as the rest of him tensed up. His face began to redden as Coral reappeared and disappeared repeatedly, walking back and forth just outside of the range of her holoface sensors. I looked away from them both and rubbed a smudge of what looked to be dried Burnham Bile Distillate from my desk.
The comms stayed silent for a while as Coral's hips came in and out of view repeatedly and the man in the black suit sat, curled into himself and breathing deeply. I'd read that the Kumo Crew had decided to go to war with Haithis Purple Dynamic Group for supporting Neodynamics refusal to honor Archon Delaine's claim to exclusive distribution rights for Onionhead Gamma Strain. When I'd stopped into Medupe and then Chelomey to pick up The Empress' programs to deliver them to Haroingori, ducking my head through Chelomey to avoid too much attention after the news about the king fight to come, I saw a picture of The Empress and remembered the story of her mother's death.
I looked at the man in the black suit and he was still sitting, crumpled in on himself, breathing deeply, and Coral stood in front of her holofac sensors, her hands flat on her desk and her head bowed, her chest still pulsing vigorously.
"Coral, what do you think about this war in Haithis?
Her head disappeared from view and she shifted her belt on her waist before sitting down. I couldn't tell if she'd heard me or not, so I repeated the question.
"Coral, the Kumo Crew went to war with Haithi Purple Dynamic group over this Onionhead Gamma Strain thing. The Empress is against drugs, full stop, so I'm not sure who'd be on the right side of this."
Her face was still turned away from me and she continued laughing before turning toward me and hazarding a glance over at the man in the black suit, who's face was still curled into a pained grimace.
"I dunno. Dad usually wants us to stay out of these kinds of things, doesn't he?"
"Well yeah..."
I looked at the man in the black suit and he seemed to be coming to his senses, looking at his hands and shaking his head slowly.
"... but this isn't really a political thing, is it? Archon Delaine's just defending his trademark against Neodynamic's infringement and mass-scale distribution. The problem for me is that the trademark is for a drug, which the Empress is completely against, and I'd have to choose to either: 1. fight to protect the trademark for a drug illegitimately produced by a pirate king, if that's something that can even exist; or 2. to defend the right to legally mass-distribute an otherwise illegal drug that was illegally reproduced by a legitimate pharmaceutical company, if that's something that can even exist."
Coral looked away from me as I spoke, looking over to the man in the black suit, then squinting at me as I finished. Her mouth twisted into a half-smile and her chest spasmed and she scratched her chin. The man in the black suit straightened out his flight-suit, and stiffened his jaw, before speaking.
"Cadence where are you now?"
"I'm in Pomoeri. I'm gonna try to get myself into Hodack and Isinor."
He kept his head down, not making eye contact with me before turning to Coral.
"What'd you find out about this thing with the King in Cubeo, Coral?"
Coral's mouth turned back into a bow and she looked away before looking at me, again.
"Um... I... I'm here in Trapezium, Dad."
The man in the black suit furrowed his brows and squinted, his head still bowed.
"Why would you go back out there, Coral? Cadence mentioned there was something going on. It would have been good to get some more information about it and I figured with the report coming in from our guy at Chelomey that you'd stopped in you might have gotten some good information."
Coral remained silent, glancing around. It hadn't occurred to me that the suit in Chelomey might not have been given the need-to-know that Coral wasn't me. Had I been coming in and out of Chelomey and delivering programs for The Empress without anyone realizing who I was since I'd been consigned to Achenar for Imperial work? I coughed down a laugh and the man in the black suit turned his head toward me, his eyes remaining lowered toward his desk.
"Dad, I think someone confused me with Cadence."
The man in the black suit opened his eyes wide and turned his head sideways, looking at me and staring for a few moments before looking away again and laughing.
"Cadence, did you speak with anyone while you were there?"
I looked at him, wide-eyed, and slowly shook my head before looking away.
The three of us sat in silence, none meeting the others' eyes, for a solid minute before Coral chimed in,
"You know, if nobody knows who's getting all of this work done for Princess Aisling, why aren't I getting the accolades and rank becoming of someone that was working as hard as whomever it was that was coming in there to Chelomey week after week?"
I turned my head sharply, squinting at Coral, and the man in the black suit laughed. The man in the black suit did recruit Coral for the specific task of providing a dual-cover for his pilots, but I didn't like the idea of all the work I'd done being surrendered over to Coral just because the stupid suit at Chelomey couldn't tell the difference between the two of us.
"Did you see our man when you were there, Cadence?"
"No. I was trying to avoid getting involved in the king fight. I don't want to be there any longer than I have to, for the most part, and until we get authorization to take our ships down to Cubeo 3's surface, I don't have all that much business, there, beyond my obligations to the Empress."
The man in the black suit sat silently for a short time. Coral was looking off in various directions, squinting and smiling.
"Coral, are you imagining being me?"
Coral looked at me and her lip curled in an expression of hatred.
"You wish! I just like the idea of someone coming over to me to talk to me about all the work I've been doing."
I squinted at her as the man in the black suit laughed.
"She better not start raking in the credits on my work."
The conversation devolved into a shouting match between me and Coral, about us being different people, and the man in the black suit worked to contain us while reminding each of us that we were still under contract as the heads of Nain Incorporated, which he represented to the organization.