“That’s a lot of stealing,” Eva said. “I’m guessing you’ve never had to use credit chits, but the people who do, they don’t tend to have enough of them for an off-planet shuttle ride.”
“Oh, right. He must not have used any of his personal accounts, either, or The Forge would have been able to track those.”
Eva nodded, carefully sitting on the floor so she could pet the cats more easily. “They could probably even find secret accounts. They’re pretty good about that stuff.” Something Sue had said nudged her brain. “You mentioned your family ships stuff through Medoral. Would Josh have been able to use a company business account, maybe?”
“Oh, maybe!” Sue smiled hopefully, then immediately scowled. “Aw, buckets. No, no, that doesn’t work. We have accountants and stuff. Every expense gets shoved into a special category for when they do taxes. If Josh bought a shuttle ticket, someone would have noticed. I remember my parents getting alerts about suspicious activity sometimes.”
“Dead end, then.” Eva winced as Mala jammed a paw into her leg wound. When had the cat climbed into her lap? So damn sneaky. “Well, I’ll get everyone else together and we’ll keep thinking. There must be something The Forge missed.”
Sue gasped and scrambled to her feet. “I’ve got it!” Her welding mask fell again, and she pulled it off entirely and tossed it to the ground.
“Got what?” Eva asked.
“The piggy bank!”
“The what?”
“We have a special account, for, um.” Sue’s cheeks flushed pink again. “Miscellaneous? It may not be, you know, legal. Maybe.”
“A lot of things are legal that probably shouldn’t be,” Eva said. “So this account was what you would use when you wanted to hide purchases, I assume?”
“Sort of. It’s for stuff that maybe wouldn’t qualify as a business expense, like . . .” Sue stared off into space, half grinning. “Once my parents took us on vacation and charged everything to that account. My dad said it was okay because he talked about business with my mom a few times.”
“Sounds like something my dad would have done, too,” Eva said. “So this account gets a fair amount of use, and nobody is really tracking it?”
“Pretty much,” Sue said. “They charge random things there all the time so it doesn’t look too suspicious.” Her pale skin flushed pink. “I use it to buy parts for my bots sometimes. Hold on, let me pull it up.”
Eva rubbed Mala’s head and face while Sue fiddled with her commlink. After a few failed login attempts and fumbling around with the interface, which Sue grumbled was “as intuitive as quantum physics,” she was able to pull up a list of transactions from the account. Sue snapped an image and pinged it to Eva, who stared at the lists of numbers and codes for a minute before shaking her head.
“I have no idea what any of this means,” Eva said.
“Me either,” Sue said gloomily. “And I can’t call my parents to ask, assuming they even know. They still think I’m working at a parts depot in Atrion until I ‘find myself’ and come home.”
“Yeah, my mom went through that phase of denial, too.” Eva slapped her forehead and groaned. “Of course. I know exactly who can help us.”
“Really?” Sue clapped in glee.
“Really. But I need a few minutes to get my story together, because this call is going to suck.” Eva lifted a highly offended Mala out of her lap and carefully got to her feet, the sharp pull of her regrowing leg skin and muscle reminding her that it was time for more pain meds. She started to limp out of the cargo bay, avoiding the bits of robot strewn around the floor and the cats who had decided she needed emotional support in the form of aggressive leg rubs.
“Who is it?” Sue called after her. “Who can help?”
Eva took a deep breath and sighed. “My mom.”
Chapter 3
Mamitis
Eva sat on the bed in her cabin and stared at her closet door, from which a holo image would be projected as soon as she summoned up the intestinal fortitude to call her mother. Fuácata rested at the foot of the bed, out of sight so Eva could avoid having to make any bullshit explanations. Her commlink assured her that local time in Libertad was midcycle, so this wouldn’t be a rude awakening in the literal sense, just a figurative one. She’d been sitting there for several minutes already, running possible conversation starters through her head, but they all sounded forced and awkward under the circumstances.
She and her mother had stopped speaking to each other thirteen years ago, more or less. A few years after Eva had left home to live with her dad, Pete, she’d gone back to visit her family for her birthday. She’d been a sullen ass the whole time, because instead of celebrating with booze and friends, she sat in the Florida room of her mother’s house and watched telenovelas with her abuelos for a week. In retrospect, they’d had plenty of fun, playing dominoes and Cubilete and comiendo mierda while stuffing themselves with albondigas and bistec de pollo and congrí. Her abuelo had even unearthed his ancient deep fryer and made old-fashioned churros, and her abuela had made flan twice because she knew how much Eva loved it. She’d listened to stories about Earth that her abuelos had heard from their bisabuelos, and helped harvest oranges from the big tree outside, and patiently untangled skeins of yarn while her abuela knitted a baby sweater for a pregnant cousin’s daughter’s niece.
But then Eva had gotten a message about a party she was missing on the other end of the universe, and she’d gotten into a screaming match with her mom about something else entirely so she could feel justified in storming off and going back to Pete. She’d apologized to her abuelos, at least, who then spent the next several years begging her not to be such a cabezona and talk to her mom already.
When she finally got fed up with Pete and left, finally owned up to all the ways she’d been a shitty human for years, Eva also reached out to her mom. But they’d never managed to mend the rift, not with so much hurt between them. They still talked rarely—on birthdates, some holidays—with most of their communication coming in the form of q-mail forwards of things her mother thought were funny. A lot of them were anecdotes about working in an office, which Eva had never done, so she didn’t really get the humor.
“Just call her, comemierda,” Eva muttered to herself. She opened a line, ran as many security protocols as she could manage to hopefully avoid eavesdroppers, and sent the code through.
The low buzz of the resolving connection was the only sound breaking the silence as Eva held her breath and waited.
The buzzing stopped, and Eva exhaled slowly. No holo image appeared, which was just as well; Eva wouldn’t have to control her expressions along with her voice.
“—her to give me one moment. Hello, this is Regina Alvarez?” Her mother’s tone was artificially bright, and in the background someone else was speaking in a low, soothing way to a more agitated but equally quiet person.
“Hi, Mami, it’s me,” Eva said. “It’s Eva. Is this a bad time?”
If not for the people arguing on the other end, Eva would have assumed the call had dropped as her mother failed to speak for several long moments.