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2.4

25 July

Clementine Cislunar Fuel Depot

Earth-Moon Lagrange Point 1

Cislunar Space


Orlov knew it was trouble when Sally and Dona approached him together.

He was in his favorite spot, at the very moonward end of the station, in the observation lounge that looked “up” at the mottled gray ceiling of Luna. The station crew mostly preferred to look “down” toward the Earth, and so he generally had this room to himself. His own quarters did not have a window, for security reasons, and neither did Operations; both were located at the core of the station, surrounded and protected by layers of less important modules. But here he could look outside, and he had come, over time, to appreciate the Moon as an austere example of nature’s beauty. Like a Strelkov painting, it rewarded calm and patience, slowly revealing its bleak details.

And so he was floating, serene, in the middle of the room. Within reach of several grab bars, yes, because the room was at the tip of a pill-shaped module, and wasn’t particularly large. But here at EML1, the gravity of Earth and Moon canceled out—real zero gravity, not just microgravity—and he liked to balance in it, to see how long he could float and look at the Moon without touching anything at all.

When the two women appeared in the hatchway, they were “behind” or “above” him, but he saw their reflections in the glass, and he heard or felt the distinctive rhythms of their breathing.

“What is it?” he asked.

If Sally had come alone, it would mean there was a problem that needed solving. The girl was smart enough not to come to him for warmth; he was certainly capable of it, or some version of it, but she seemed to sense she had not yet earned the privilege. She also did not come to him for small talk. He was capable of that, too, but the idea seemed to bore her as much as it did him. No, when she came to him, it was always about practical matters she could not address without his help.

If Dona had come alone, here, to his quiet place, it meant either that she was stressed out about something and wanted to fuck it away, or that something was wrong that needed his immediate attention.

If it was both of them, together, it meant Sally had stirred up something serious, and needed Dona both for cover and to help solve the problem. As he’d feared all along, the girl was trouble.

“What is it?” he repeated.

“It’s about the passport holders,” Dona said.

“Yes?”

He still didn’t touch anything. He still didn’t turn around.

“Some of them want asylum,” Dona said.

“Hmm. Here?”

“Yes, Grigory. Here.”

“Asylum is the wrong word—” Sally started to say. But Dona must have stopped her.

She needn’t have; he could follow Sally’s logic well enough. If these murderous Cartel insurgents were now citizens of Clementine Cislunar Fuel Depot, then what they sought was, legally speaking, repatriation.

“This is a place of business,” he said calmly. “And what few job openings we have are for people with highly specialized skills. If they’re looking for work, they should learn Russian, and apply to the security division on Earth.”

“They’re not looking for work,” Sally said.

Orlov sighed. “This is not a hotel, girl. It’s not even a slum; it’s a hydrocarbon extraction facility. Did you not anticipate this development? Did you not explain the arrangement to your contacts?”

“Not well enough, obviously,” she said, without apology.

“Hmm.”

The Cartels were used to having their way. They were bad enemies to make—very bad—and Sally had drawn their attention here. She had, to his surprise, made the company almost a trillion rubles in just over two months, and the passport trade showed no sign of slowing down. But at what cost?

He began to feel the first stirrings of anger.

“How many people?” he asked.

“Forty so far,” Dona said. “About a third of the passport holders.”

“Absurd,” he said. “We couldn’t accommodate five. What solutions do you propose?”

For a moment, neither woman said anything. They had something to say, clearly, but they were reluctant. Even Dona was reluctant.

“Out with it,” he said, now letting the anger color his voice.

“We give them what they want,” Sally finally said. “We sell them what they want. These people have more money than—”

Sally made a sound, as if she’d been elbowed lightly in the ribs.

So well balanced was Orlov that he was still facing toward the Moon. However, the entrance of Sally and Dona had disturbed the air currents in here. He could feel himself beginning to drift and rotate, so rather than succumb to the inevitable, he reached for a grab bar and turned to face his daughter and girlfriend.

“Sally, do not let our recent cash flow embolden you. You’ve fucked us, here, and if you do not find a way to unfuck us, I will solve this problem myself, most likely by handing you over to the Cartels. Is that clear enough? Am I properly understood?”

“Yes, sir,” she said, though with both less fear and less bravado than she would have shown a few months ago. Like Dona, she was wearing the gray Clementine uniform, with the Orlov Petrochemical logo embroidered on the breast. She had abandoned the jewelry and designer clothes, understanding that they did her no good here. Her long hair was tied back. She still wore the smartglasses, though.

Beside her, Dona was calm. A Black woman with close-cropped hair, she held herself motionless with a fingertip on the lip of the hatch, simply waiting to see what was going to happen.

“Dona,” Orlov said, “you have thought about this longer than I. Days longer? You must have some thoughts on the matter.”

Impassively, Dona said, “Give the passport holders what they want: a place to hide. They have vast resources, but they are hunted by the AIs of a dozen governments. If they can’t escape, they’re going to find themselves at war again.”

“And we put them where?” Orlov demanded. “Here?”

“No. Build a dedicated facility, just for them.”

“Hmm.”

That was, on the face of it, an outrageous idea. Unlike Renz Ventures and Harvest Moon, Orlov Petrochemical had no ability to construct habitat modules in space. They could manufacture plastics, and of course mining asteroids for volatiles produced a lot of metal as a side effect. They sold most of the metal to Enterprise City and Harvest Moon, but kept some for 3D-printing of complex components. But a habitat module was ten thousand kilograms of a hundred different materials, some machined to sub-micron precision, and Orlov had never invested in the capability. Neither had Dan Beseman, so Enterprise City did the same thing as Orlov Petrochemical: build the modules on Earth and assemble them in space.

That had made perfect sense for Clementine, which only needed to be built once, and which didn’t need any sort of rapid growth to meet its business goals. But it had literally cost a fortune—trillions of rubles, tens of billions of dollars—which was a lot of money even for a man like Orlov.

“They have enough money for this?” he asked.

Without nodding or shrugging, or really moving her body at all, Dona said, “They haven’t blinked at the cost of passports.”

Orlov could feel the corners of his mouth drawing down. “This facility would be much like the prisons they think they’re avoiding. Is there any useful work these people could accomplish? And if they could, would they consent to taxation? Prisons do not include the constant risk of explosive decompression.”

“Aren’t you here for similar reasons?” Sally asked. “Outside the grasp of Earthly law? If it’s so terrible here, why do you and so many other people remain? Perhaps these Cartelians, these would-be Clementinians, dream of the stars as much as you do.”

Ignoring that, Orlov said, “They would be in need of constant resupply.”

“From here, mostly,” Dona said. “At low cost and exorbitant markup. You disappoint me, my love. Here is everything you could ever want: wealthy, powerful, frightening men who are lining up to be your most captive market. Charge them whatever you like; let them squeeze the Earth, let them bleed it and hand the proceeds over to you. Let them arm you, equip you, tell you their secrets, and if they step out of line, poof! You shut off the air.

“They do not want to be hunted in jungles, Grigory, or driven to hide in some of the world’s most terrible slums. They do not want to fight the United States again, or fight each other to avoid it. All you need do is provide them an alternative they like better than that. Do only that and nothing more, and the Cartels are in your pocket.”

With the Moon at his back, Orlov stared at the two of them for a while, and finally said, “These men are far more wicked and vindictive than we are, ladies, and they are not stupid. Holding them at arm’s length is one thing; what you propose is more intimate. It’s naïve to think they will meekly acquiesce. No, they will scheme and plot and, when the time is right, they will strike. Indeed, it may be too late for us already.”

“So, then,” said Dona, “shall we curl up in a ball and weep? It doesn’t matter how wicked they are. It doesn’t even matter how smart. We will bind them to us. As bankers and jailers and diplomats and animal trainers, we will ensure their dependence. Love and loyalty may be perhaps too much to hope for, but they will jump on command.”

But Sally, surprisingly, said: “I think you’re right, Father. I think it is too late. If you’d stayed the course you were on, you’d not be a trillionaire much longer. If you take this step now, you’ll be the wealthiest man in the Solar System, though at the price of never closing your eyes again. And if you do not take this step, then I’m fairly sure even throwing me to the wolves will not buy you peace. I have fucked us.”

Orlov just sort of took that in for a while, and finally burst out laughing.

“This is what I get, ah? For my sins? Well, a man has to die sometime. Every man has to, and every woman, too, though not always in such a spectacular fashion! This is priceless, my darlings, utterly priceless. All right! Ha! Let’s build a terrorist hotel and see what happens!”


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