Polar City Nightmare by Katharine Kerr

Author:Katharine Kerr [Kerr, Katharine]
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Science fiction, Fiction, Fantasy
ISBN: 9781857987836
Published: 2010-03-07T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

A couple of hours before sunrise, Rosa Wallace leaves a party going strong behind her. In a cloud of loud music, her host escorts her to the door.

'Want me to walk you to your car?' Mario says.

'Nah, aint necessary. Swell party, but I got my training to consider. We gonna play again in about three days.'

With a cheery wave Rosa hurries down the steps to the quiet street lined with stone-built houses set cheek to jowl in an Old Earth style, each with a bay window, gleaming with lamplight behind lace curtains. As soon as she gets away from Mario's, Rosa becomes aware of footsteps. Someone's walking on the other side of the street, pacing her. She glances over a person in a suncloak, at night. She stops; the person continues on a few steps, then slows. Waiting for her to catch up? Her stomach clenches.

Her jade-green skimmer sits at the kerb half a block on. Rosa fumbles in her pocket for the keys, pulls out the remote and clicks it once. As she reaches the car, the driver's door opens. She slides in, then hits the autolock. Across the street her suncloaked shadow has stopped walking. In the rear-view mirror she can see a second person jogging down the middle of the street and heading straight for her. She activates the car, twists the wheel, and hits the accelerator. They spin out of the parking place with her automatic sensors shrieking and squeal around in a half-circle. The skimmer shudders, then rises in a thunder of compressed air. The person in the road jumps back, trips and rolls into the gutter. Rosa speeds to the end of the block, turns randomly left, and slows down to the legal limit. Maybe it was no one, maybe nothing - but the street fight in Esperance has left her with an attitude about people tailing her. She drives home by a random route, doubling back and making a lot of false turns before she finally reaches her condo in the best part of Porttown. The building looks cheap on the outside, a huge cube of orange and brown plastocrete dotted with graffiti like most Porttown apartment blocks, but the developers gutted the inside and turned it into flats for those few people who have the money to live well and reasons for staying in the old neighbourhood. Rosa turns into an alley behind the building, then turns again and lands the skimmer in front of what looks like a blank wall. When she presses a button on the dashboard, a wide door rolls up and reveals the guarded parking garage underneath. She drives in and the door closes behind her. Phil, the young Blanco who works the night shift, leaves his kiosk and joins her at her parking place as she gets out of the car.

'Say, Miz Rosa? There be cops upstairs, waiting for you.'

'Oh shit! Guess they caught me speeding again.'

Rosa rides the tenants-only grav lift up to her floor.

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