But Marguerite, maybe … Part of my bruised heart desperately wants to trust my sister.
I lift my hands to rest them on her shoulders in return. ‘Mom’s going to be furious,’ I whisper.
Marguerite’s smile is conspiratorial. ‘We can handle her. After what we’re going to do for GravesUP here, she’ll let us write blank checks.’
A faint strand of relief starts to wind its way through me. Maybe Icanhave both. Someone who has my back,andthe chance to step up at last. To do something worthy of my grandfather’s legacy. There must be a reason she’s here that makes sense. This is my sister, after all.
She sees the moment of decision on my face and nods. ‘I’m glad nobody shot you,’ she says.
The reminder brings me back to the present moment with a jolt.
‘Yeah … can we start with what you’re doing invading the UN?’ I ask. ‘I heard your people talk about upping the oxygen levels and blowing this place up in, what, about two hours?’
‘That’s on the to-do list,’ she admits, finally letting go of me and circling around behind the desk once more to sink into her chair. I take the visitor’s chair on the opposite side, and at exactly the same time, we rock our chairs back to rest our boots against the edge of the desk. Some stuff is just genetics, I guess.
‘This is the UN,’ I point out. ‘I mean, at risk of stating the obvious.’
‘That’s why we’re here,’ she agrees. ‘Have you been in the system?’
‘Sure. I saw your people going through the registers.’
‘Huh.’ She’s thoughtful. ‘They should have seenyou. Did you see what we’re spoofing? Orbital thinks this place has completely vented and is repressurizing now.’
There’s a glee to her tone that worries me, and I’m trying and failing to think of any scenario in which, based on what she’s just said, GravesUP aren’t the bad guys. But the fact that I haven’t thought of it doesn’t mean it’s not there somewhere.
‘It’s a great way to empty a place out, an evacuation,’ she says. ‘Speaking of which, why weren’t you evacuated?’
‘I wasn’t registered yet,’ I say. ‘Nobody knew to save me a seat.’
Marguerite studies me for a moment, shaking her head. ‘That’s spectacularly bad luck,’ she replies. ‘Then again, spectacularlygoodluck I’m the one who showed, so I guess it’s a wash. Anyway, we needed the false signal to give us some time to ourselves. You know every Martian settlement is registered here, yes? Neutral third party.’
‘Sure.’
She grins. ‘They also register their remote access codes with Pax. The UN acts as a central trustee, so that in an emergency, say if the staff at a settlement were incapacitated by illness or an environmental event, someone can remotely control what’s happening from here.’
I shake my head slowly. ‘Getting into those would take a lot of time, even for us. They’d have them locked down tighter than Mom’s wallet.’
‘Not if everybody ran out of here without shutting down properly,’ Marguerite replies.
Something’s shifting inside me, my stomach turning over as my uneasiness grows. I keep my voice even, but I sound off tomy own ears, my mouth going dry. ‘Okay, clever. What are you going to do with the access codes?’
‘I’m going to blow a bunch of basic systems, so whole settlements empty out. Six of them, to be exact.’
‘Six different bases?’
‘Right. Keep up, Hunter. Here at Pax, we could do it by hacking in and setting off the alarms, but that won’t work for the settlements we’re targeting – smaller ones, mostly. They don’t have great software, so we’ll have to actually blow the seals.’
‘You’re going to—’ I cut myself off, my gut tightening in appalled anticipation. ‘Okay, then what?’
‘Legally, that’ll mean they’ve been abandoned, and all we have to do is roll in some GravesUP Industries troops, and we can take possession.’
‘Byabandoned, do you mean everyone will be dead?’
Her mouth twists with regret. ‘Yes.’
My heart’s beating too fast, as if my body’s getting ready to run, or fight, but I force my thoughts to slow, so I can absorb what my sister’s saying.
‘Okay,’ I say slowly. ‘And we’re doing this because the current tenants are …?’
