“My first trip away.” She leaned closer to the screen to catch a glimpse of Balco on the right. She wasn’t piloting this craft, and she was quite happy to sightsee.
“You would have thought Jaden Tris was expecting to never see you again, the way he carried on.” Eazi’s tone was dry.
She thought about her administrative assistant, and the fuss he’d made about her trip.
“Yes, I suspect he was happy to be rid of me, the way he practically ran to carry my bags.”
“You think he’s planning something?” Eazi’s voice took on a sharp edge.
“No. He’s a bit of a control freak, that’s all. If I’m not here, he’s got more power.” She smiled up at the lens. “He just wants to be the best aide he can possibly be, and I can’t object to him wanting to do a good job.”
“I’ll keep an eye on him while you’re gone, anyway” Eazi said.
“Thanks.” The runner had headed out to space at a fast pace, away from the way station, away from Balco, and suddenly they were behind one of Balco’s moons.
Fiona studied the pock-marked surface with interest as they came to a stop and then drifted gently.
“I’m changing all the markers on this runner, so it looks like a tourist class vessel from Larga Ways.” She and Eazi had decided the best way for her to go down was to have a way off of Balco whenever she wanted, which meant she needed her own transportation. Fortunately, Balco was close enough to the way station that Eazi could pilot and control the runner himself, no matter where on Balco it was.
“And I’m about to become Feenra Planer, a Grih from Xal.” That was the Grihan planet Hal was from. He had described it to her so many times, it almost felt like she’d been there herself.
Feenra was a deliberate name choice. Most people knew her as Fiona Russell, but her close friends called her Fee, and she wanted to have a good excuse for the Grihan spies who were going to babysit her to call her by a familiar name.
She stood and picked up the small case Eazi had had delivered to her earlier, and went into the tiny bathroom in the runner to open it up.
Inside was a wig and two ear molds designed to fit over her ears perfectly, indistinguishable from her own skin tone. They had pointy tips.
She fitted them on, and tilted her head one way and then the other. “These are good, Eazi. If anyone grabs me by the ear, they might realize they aren’t real, but other than that, I won’t even have to walk around with the hood of my cape up.”
Eazi had made them for her in the small workshop he had set up just off the docks. He used it to store and play with the equipment and other interesting things that came through Larga Ways that he thought would be useful.
Given the money they generated for themselves, he could have whatever he liked, and last time she was in there, she had commented that he would soon need a bigger space.
“Why would someone grab you by the ear?” Eazi asked, and she could hear a faint thread of shock in his voice.
“They shouldn’t. I’m just saying the only way these will be revealed as fakes is if someone tries to remove them.” She wound her hair up and piled it on top of her head, and then pulled on the wig.
It was the same color as her own hair, but short. It stood up on end and was tipped with blonde. “There used to be toys on Earth based on mythical creatures called trolls. A cute version of the myth, not the darker interpretation, and they had hair a bit like this.” She studied herself in the mirror, amazed at how much the ears and the wig transformed her.
“Trolls and elves? Is that what the Grih look like?” Eazi sounded amused.
“Well, more elf than troll. The troll part only applies to the cute version’s hair style. That, or punk rockers from the 1980s.” She grinned at the irony, because the Grih did not like punk rock, as she and her friends had discovered. Too discordant for their delicate elf ears.
When she walked out of the bathroom, she headed for one of the larger bags Jaden Tris had helped her load onboard and opened it up.
She stared down into it at the array of weapons Eazi had provided for her.
“I didn’t get the chance to see what you’d packed for me before, but I don’t recognize half of these.” More than half, if she was being honest. “This I know.” She lifted out the familiar dark metallic bracelet and hung it over her wrist, then touched the emblem on one of the links so it would adjust its size to fit her.
“Hello, old friend.” She smiled down at the reflector as it mapped her body with thin blue lines of light before winking off. It had served her very well in the past.
She found the reflective silk clothing Eazi had given her back then, too, but she couldn’t wear it this time, or not while she was out and about in the city. She was supposed to look like a tourist, not slink around like an invisible spy.
She was wearing a thin Cargassey cloth t-shirt and what she thought of as short cycling pants under her clothing. She would attract too much attention if her outerwear was Cargassey cloth, given how rare and expensive it was, but it was cold enough on Balco right now for layers, and it made her feel better about the possibility of a shockgun strike.
Not that there should be a lot of people running around below with shockguns, but neither she nor Eazi wanted to take the chance, and Cargassey cloth was a good way to protect against shockgun fire.
She rifled through the bag and pulled out a light gun. Hal had been very unhappy when Eazi had tried to give her one before, as they’d been outlawed in the UC, but that obviously hadn’t stopped him putting it in her bag this time.
