The Underappreciated Art of Space Espionage

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. But just to be safe, I checked for a pulse one more time . . . and, satisfied that he truly was dead, sealed off the trash chute, pressed a single button, and sent him on a never ending journey to the unknown.

I don’t love killing people, okay? It’s just a part of my job at times. And in my defense, he did try to kill me first.

And for what? Some greedy corporation that will never know or care what happened to him.

It really is: live by the sword, die by the sword.

Or in our case: live by corporate espionage, die by corporate espionage.

“I’m done with this life.” I said loudly, to no one, as I punched the trash chute button a few more times. It hadn’t jammed, or insulted my Cruz-Uche family line or anything, it just . . . felt good to punch.

“I’m done for real this time.” I said more softly, again to myself, because there was no one else on the C3801 PSEV (Personal Space Exploration Vehicle, for the newbs) that I’d recently re-commandeered from the unlucky spy.

“Is that proper grammar? Re-commandeered? He commandeered it from my idiot boss on Targo, flew one planet away . . . and then I re-commandeered it on Elsaun. So, yeah. Let’s go with it.”

Having important debates like this with myself was the key to retaining even a fraction of my mental health in space. I’d be far too lonely without them.

And I’d have too much time available to process my emotions, which is not smart in my line of work.

Also not smart? Letting cuts get infected. I seemed to be dripping blood from somewhere, but had no idea where.

Using a window as a reflective surface, I found the gash quickly. Under my chin.

I’d be adding to my collection of scars there—one from roller skating on Earth, one from a Japanese blade that almost took my life on the planet Khani, and now one from a fight mid-space with another contractor.

“Couldn’t have hit me anywhere else, bro?” I asked in the direction of the trash chute. “Just rude.”

I watched the spy’s lifeless form float away instead of heading to clean myself up. I realized I didn’t even know the name of the man I’d just killed, and that made me feel—something.

Is this what my therapist was talking about? A long-standing depression from wrestling with two identities—a good person who did what I needed to do for my family and a universally-feared-fixer-assassin-spy.

“Nah. I’m probably just hungry.”

After all, the easiest answer (hunger) is probably the right one. Or at least it’s the one that keeps the discomfort at bay.

“Nadia, focus. Get cleaned up. Fly this top-secret-yet-so-not-worth-killing-over hunk of tech back to Targo, collect your money, and tell Black Sky to . . . to . . . to . . . whatever, man. They haven’t invented the words, on any planet, to express how much I hate working for these people.”

After reprogramming autopilot to take me back to Targo, I moved with purpose to the bathroom that doubled as a personal med bay.

First, I took off my ankle and thigh weapons. Two guns, that I named Itsy and Bitsy, and a hunting knife my father gave me. A knife that a long line of Igbo warriors had owned.

It used to have the Uche family name inscribed on the handle, but I’d long ago carved it into a simple rectangle. Identifying marks on a weapon? Rookie shit.

I sighed as I carefully set the blade down.

My father had hoped to give it to his son one day, but even if my brother had been born before my dad passed, he’d probably still have given it to me.

Let’s just say I took after my father’s Nigerian warrior-ness at a young age even though I was the spitting image of my mom.

My little bro though? A complete momma’s boy who looked more like our dad.

But to be fair, Valentina (our resourceful, wise, and beautiful mother), was the only parent he ever got to know.

Damn I missed her. I missed my dad. And I missed my tiny squirt of a brother I hadn’t seen in twenty years.

“Dear God, please let him still be alive.” It was habit to pray, even though, after exploring so much of the universe, I wasn’t really sure who I was talking to anymore.

But that’s a conversation for another time. At this moment, it was more important to test my memory to see if I could imagine every detail of the squirt’s face. That goofy kid.

Toffee skin. Dark brown curls. Birthmark on his left temple that barely peeked out from his hairline. I remembered it as a tiny tie dye explosion of shades of brown.

What does he look like now? He’d be a grown man I guess. Shit.

I hadn’t laid eyes on Sebastian since the time I . . . creatively relieved a few rich people of some of their funds so we could afford to send mi herman-it-it-it-ito (my little little little kid bro) on one of the Super Speeders that left Earth before it became uninhabitable.

“Cue the violin music, Nadia.”

I didn’t have time for this miss my family pity party.

I looked in the mirror and realized I had a lot of cut cleaning and rehab to go before I was ready to be on-planet to do the handoff with my bosses, the Eisel Family.

I let my curls loose for a second, so I could re-pull them into a bun and wash my face. The hot water stung near my ear and under my chin, letting me know where I needed to disinfect and apply my special glue.

Next, I peeled off my pants—fitted militaristic pants, all black of course.

As I started pulling my shirt over my head, I felt a nasty pain in my right ribs for the first time.

It was sharp and dull at the same time, so I lightly pressed in different places to assess the damage. It wasn’t broken, but there was definitely going to be some fun bruising.

Shirt off. Unmentionables off. Quick shower. Change of clothes. And done.

Of course, by “change of clothes,” I meant the exact same outfit I was wearing moments before, but a backup version. I always have three or four backups with me.

“Damn, girl. You look good for someone who was just in a life or death fight.” I assured myself in the mirror.

Valentina always taught me to hype myself up with my words, so I wouldn’t constantly seek out others to do it for me.

I loved my curls. I loved my full lips, nose, and eyes, even though my features were the target of many a joke from the kids in the camps near ours growing up.

“No entiendo.” I would say and brush it off. Even though, I very much entiendo’d. Everyone left on Earth around the year 2300 spoke English.

Why? Because everyone on Earth at that time had to speak functional versions of the languages of the Five Families who controlled space transportation—English, Japanese, German, more English, and finally Igbo.

I stared in the mirror of my bathroom-slash-med-bay and winked, “It’s time to land your fine ass on Targo and collect this major coinage, girl.”

I programmed the ship’s speakers to my landing tracks—music from my favorite ancient artists—Celia Cruz and Marco Antonio Muñiz Rivera, a.k.a. Marc Anthony.

“We ballin . . . we ballin.” I sang as I danced a few salsa steps and thought about this 400 million yen payday I was about to have. Enough money to retire retire.

The prototype I was flying back to Targo was worth trillions to the Eisels.

My dance in the mirror continued, “You ballin. You sexy. You fine girl, you fine. Sexxxxual chocolate.”

SMH. Shaking my helmet. “What is wrong with you, Nadia?”

But whatever. I loved myself fully as an act of rebellion.

And I definitely loved my brown skin. It was smooth (outside of the various scars and bruises) and its tone and shade were a perfect midpoint between my parents. Valentina Cruz was a light caramel, Chinedu Uche was dark chocolate.

And yes, I realize my chosen analogies (caramel and dark chocolate) betray my insatiable inner sweet tooth, and/or make it seem like my parents were exotic dancers back on Earth.

They were not.

She was a doctor. He was an engineer. But most of all, they were as we all were in those final years of Earth’s livability, survivors.

Enough reminiscing. Time for a tiny bit of makeup to cover these new cuts. Not my norm, but I wanted to look good when I told the Eisel Family I would no longer be accepting jobs as a part of their evil flock of assassins and criminals.

“Probably shouldn’t word myself like that if I want to live.” I laughed.

——

A few hours later, I landed on the planet Targo and started making my way on foot to the seedy part of the main town, also called Targo.

Apparently evacuating Earth and inhabiting several new planets didn’t make humans any more creative with our naming of things.

Targo was a more barren planet than many of the others that humans now inhabited. If you were a fan of 21st century Earth sci-fi movies, Targo was kinda like the planets you’d see in them.

The landscape was different shades of tan and the plant life was made up of shrubs more than trees. Food was grown in large shipping containers on most planets these days. A skill humans mastered in the last several decades of life on Earth.

I passed a row of said containers on my walk into downtown. A row of blue metal boxes, dimly lit by electric lights at night, anchored to the ground and painted with Earth trees—which added beautiful shades of green to the landscape.

I knew they weren’t real trees, but they gave me a boost of endorphins anyway. Considering the planet looked and smelled like dirt, this art was the highlight of my walk downtown.

A soft metallic scraping sound seemed to be coming from a couple hundred feet away, so I decided to duck behind a row of containers and find out what it was.

I was carrying (in my head) the location of, and unlock codes for, trillions of yen in tech. There was no such thing as being too careful.

I crept slowly to the next row to get closer to the source of the odd noise. It was starting to sound like a giant nail file scraping back and forth on a container.

As I carefully turned a corner, I saw the source of the sound and relaxed. A kid, no older than 13, was literally using a file—trying in vain to break in and get food.

I knew the tech behind these “growers” (our name for shipping containers like this) and I knew this kid was getting nowhere fast.

I snuck to the next row of containers, and tapped on the heads-up display of the device on my wrist. A quick few lines of code and I had one of the containers open. I knew it would make the same sound all growers make when opening up, so I hid a few containers away after it opened.

I saw the kid cautiously approach, looking both ways. He spotted the open container and hesitated before going in. His face, under the light, reminded me of Sebastian—sweet, scared, not yet sure of his place in the world.

Poor kid was probably out gathering food for his whole family. Nobody so young should have that weight on them.

He took one more look around to see if this was a trap of some kind, then decided to risk it and go in. Hunger weighed more than suspicion.

He’d be able to grab enough food for days in there, and the corporation who owned these growers wouldn’t miss it.

I felt a small sense of satisfaction as I continued to make my way to town.

They say, when you’re on Targo, to trust no one. And to never let your guard down.

I laughed. It must be stressful for normal people here. But, I like it. I always assume everyone I meet wants me dead, so Targo just works for me.

I actually have what some people would call “friends” here.

Okay, okay, I have one friend here.

And before going to the handoff with Heinrich, my previously mentioned boss who only has nepotism, not skill, to thank for his position, I needed to pick up that one friend from his pop-up speakeasy, Silencio.

I did an initial scan of the room when I entered the underground layer G had claimed for his current bar. He created pop-up bars on every planet he lived, and never named them the same thing twice. He tried to be somewhat untraceable like that.

His establishments were legendary though. There were many bars and criminal hideouts on every planet, of course, but in G’s, you were at home.

Well, those of us in certain lines of work felt at home. We could gather, do business, or blow off some steam . . . whatever the situation called for.

But, G never stayed in one spot, or even on one planet, for more than a couple months.

Except the one time he fell in love with a person whose name you cannot speak around him, if you're fond of keeping all your limbs.

My initial scan of the large room with perfect mood lighting didn’t reveal anyone who might recognize me, or anyone who looked particularly murderous, so I made my way towards a spot at the bar where I could listen in on a nearby table with three men engaged in a hush-hush convo. I’m nosy like that.

The scent of canela was tickling my nose, so I ordered a coffee with canela and tried to look casual as I turned my attention to the men.

Illegal robot tech was carefully arranged on the table between them, plus a part or two I wouldn’t mind getting my hands on to upgrade the navigation system on Harley. Which of course, is what I named the knockoff bike I use when I’m on-planet.

One of the men at the table looked a little too well groomed for Silencio. Not a hair was out of place on his head. His sholo (think: bullet-proof poncho, but more slim, and typically outfitted with special weapons flaps) was too new.

And he looked like he could be a model for the new C3801 PSEV billboards whenever my bosses were ready to unveil it. He reminded me of that handsome 21st century Earth actor, Idris-something.

“You can’t trust a man that gorgeous.” A famous Valentina saying that she used to repeat to me in my teenage years.

“We can pay 1 million yen. Final offer.” The man sitting next to Idris said, after looking to him for a nod of approval.

“Well then, these are not the droids you are looking for.” The man across from them (who could also be a model) said this with a straight face.

I had to stifle my laughter. Rather, I changed it into a cough, mid-laugh.

Idris gracefully rose from the table and turned toward me, making prolonged eye contact. His friend huffed off toward the other end of the bar.

I got up from my stool so that I could inspect the robot tech more closely. Idris hadn’t moved yet. Or broken eye contact.

Based on my extensive knowledge of 20th century through 23rd century Earth films (which G forces me to watch on long flights), I think this is where I’m supposed to make an adorable gulping noise and try to choke out a few non-embarrassing words.

I don’t gulp or bat eyelashes for anyone though, so I gave Idris the “Are you gonna move out of my way or do I need to move you myself?” look.

He seemed to like that. But, he acquiesced my non-verbal command and moved as I slid into the seat he just vacated.

I looked at the ruggedly handsome gentleman in front of me. He looked at me. We didn’t blink. We didn’t speak.

Apparently there was a lot of this going on tonight.

He took a pair of keys out of his all-black sholo pocket and slid them over to me.

“That’ll be your downfall, you know.” I said matter of factly.

“What?”

“How many people do you know who want to kill you, G?”

“You mean in this galaxy . . . or you mean, like . . . anywhere?” G asked as he moved a wave of hair out of his face, finally blinking.

“One of these days, one of your mannnny enemies is gonna land on a random planet, ask if anyone knows a tall Dominican guy who regularly quotes science fiction Earth movies from before the Second Dark Ages, and your enemies will be led right to you.” I said, joking-not-joking. “Because, just in case I’m not being clear, you are the only being in the universe who does that.”

G laughed with his eyes, but kept a serious face so Silencio patrons wouldn’t see him smile. Respect. He had a rep to maintain.

Determined to break him though, I put on my best G voice (deep and smooth, yet also the voice of someone who has done some dirt) and waved my hand like a Jedi, “These are not the droids you are looking for.”

He smirked. Then looked around quickly to see if anyone had witnessed his semi-smile.

“En serio, G.” I said, switching to a disapproving auntie voice as he was still scanning the room. “Te prometo, I promise you, if your weird obsession with those 2050s films gets us killed one day, I will come back from the dead and kill you again.”

His head jerked back to me so fast it felt like an Earth cartoon.

“Excuse me. Star Wars was first released in . . . oh . . . I see what you did there . . . you said something you knew would piss me off, because now you’re gonna make a cute face and apologize, and then ask me to do something that’s probably gonna get me killed. Am I right?”

“What cute face?” I asked as I . . . oh shit, I guess I did bat my eyelashes for certain people.

“That face. Right there. You’re not slick, Nadia.”

“Listen. It’s not dangerous. It’s just a standard dropoff to HE7.” My nickname for Heinrich Eisel the 7th, my boss for exactly twenty more minutes.

“You don’t need me then. It’s just Heinrich. If he even knows how to take the safety off his gun, he’s likely to accidentally shoot himself in the leg before he hurts anyone else.”

“And,” G continued, “I gave you the keys to Harley, which I kept in pristine condition while you were playing around on Elsaun by the way. You’re welcome.”

“Arigato gozaimasu. And . . . pleeease.” There went my eyelashes again.

“I mean, ¿que?” he asked. “Are you afraid you’re gonna finally succumb to his charms and take him up on his offer to be Mrs. Eisel? I get it. I get it. You want me there to stop you from acting on your deepest desires.”

On Earth we had a saying: when hell freezes over. Now, the common phrase amongst former Earthians is: when Earth is livable again.

Translation: never. Never will I ever be seduced by my boss. G was just being an asshole, like usual.

“I hate you.”

“Mentirosa.”

“I want you there because this dropoff is significant. I’m quitting, G. I’m getting out of it. And with you around, he won’t try to hit on me.”

“Ha! To point number two. And extra ha! to point number one.”

“Okay, fair on two. But, Heinrich will hit on me less with you there. And I’m serious on point one. I’m done with this shit. I want to find my little brother, if he’s still alive,” I paused at the thought, “and retire somewhere with a star like our sun. I miss the fucking sun.”

“Ehh. I guess I wouldn’t mind seeing HE7’s idiot face when you quit. I heard he’s in trouble with mommy Eisel right now. People are even saying she might be coming to Targo. And if I get an Ada Eisel sighting out of this . . .” he actually looked excited as he said this, “that’d be . . . yes.”

I won’t say Ada is the most ruthless person in all the livable solar systems, but she’s top five. I can’t stand to be in the same room as her.

G seemed to be having a fanboy moment, which was very uncharacteristic.

“You’re weird. Just so you know.” I informed him.

“Vamos, then. No me gusta este speakeasy anyway.” He said jokingly as he winked at me and gave me a look that made me slightly fidgety.

I knew G truly cared for me, like family. And I hadn’t had one of those in a long time.

I paused for a moment to really look at G. His skin kept a glow at all times that made it look like he just left Earth and the rays of our aforementioned sun two days ago. But we’d left on the same ship, 15 long years ago.

In fact, the Super Speeder we met on wasn’t as fast as the current ones are, so we had a whole 18-month voyage to get to know each other.

I mean, sure. I was initially attracted to G . . in that way you are when you’re 20 and you run into one of the only other Spanish speakers on a Speeder with thousands of people.

And yeah, fine. He looked at me then the way he still does now, with that . . . “I will kill anyone who so much as sneezes wrong in your direction.” look.

But, we’re just friends, okay? Because true friendships are rare in this post-Earth world. Especially in our lines of work. So, I’d never do anything to ruin this one.

Plus, his last friend-turned-lover situation didn’t turn out so well. He had literal and figurative scars to prove it.

And if I ever run into the woman who caused those scars, I plan to come out of retirement for one more job.

——

G and I were making good time on our walk to the handoff with Heinrich, which I was not looking forward to.

Mainly because whenever I had meetings with HE7, I had to do this annoying dance of rejecting his advances while still securing another job from the Eisel Family at the same time.

Heinrich would start by saying that we should get a drink while the payment was processing, because “400 million yen isn’t chump change.”

Sidenote: somehow, he trusted me to retrieve the most advanced tech in the galaxy, but he didn’t think I understood how 400 million yen take the same amount of time to send as 40.

It’s 2314. Earth is not a livable planet anymore. And yet some men are still objectifying women, and assuming we don’t know anything at the same time. Whyyy?

I knew why. Heinrich wanted the “conquest.” He even made sure to tell me one day that he’d never “had an Afro-Latina before.” Like, he actually worded himself like that.

In addition to that, people born on Earth (20 years before the last Super Speeder left the Milky Way, in my case) are fascinating to the ultra-rich like him.

His family was the second of the Five Families to start evacuating Earth. They left in the late 2100s. So, he came from a long line of Eisels born on other planets, and only knew other super wealthy people like himself.

Generations of people who weren’t as fortunate as the Five Families, or the people who could pay their exorbitant fees for Super Speeder transport, stayed on Earth another 130 years or so.

Families, like mine, scraped everything they could together, over the course of 10 - 20 years, just to send one person on an SS ship. It was such B.S.

The Five Families could have evacuated millions more people than they did.

Well, to be fair, the first three families had the tech and ability.

The last two (an American family and a Nigerian one) only completed development of their ships in time to transport people for the last two decades of Earth.

Even at a young age, it wasn’t lost on me the types of people the Families chose to transport and the communities they chose to leave behind.

I saw how futile it was to try to save up for passage on their ships, so I started to develop creative skills I knew would be useful to people like the Eisels.

If you can’t currently beat them, join them until you can. That’s been my motto since I was 9.

By age 13, I was an accomplished thief, hacker, and deception artist. By age 15, I had reallocated enough funds (from people who wouldn’t miss them) to secure passage for my little brother on an SS to the planet Cruno.

He was 7. It was the worst and happiest day of my life to send him off to a better life.

“Nadia, where are you right now?” G’s voice broke through my thoughts and reminded me that we were moments away from walking into the warehouse Heinrich was working out of on the outskirts of downtown Targo.

I looked up to see we were passing a billboard for Accelerated Dynamics. It featured a diverse cast of smiling humans and read “Who better to trust than The First Family of Flight?” . . . which made me want to puke.

“Sorry. I was, uh, thinking.” I said as I turned to look at G. His long stride was confident. He was both an intimidating force (tall, well-versed in various martial arts, 230+ pounds) and light on his feet at the same time.

“About how much you love Heinrich and want to have his babies?”

“I will murder you, G. And they will never find your body.”

He ignored my threat completely. “Hey, how did this idiot lose his family’s new prototype anyway?”

“Wait. How did you know that’s what I went to get?” I asked, confused but not entirely surprised. G was only supposed to know where I was going, not what I was doing.

He didn’t acknowledge my question. Which was his way of saying, “Nadia, there’s nothing that happens in the underworld that I don’t get wind of. Quit acting brand new like you didn’t know that already.”

“I’m not sure, exactly.” I finally answered. “I think he was trying to show it off to some guy he wanted to sleep with. Turns out the guy was spying for Accelerated Dynamics. Duh. And he stole the ship then flew to Elsaun where they could properly inspect it.”

“Pendejo.” G said, just as the warehouse came into view. “Let’s get your money and bounce, girl.”

We took maybe three or four more steps before it hit me.

“Fuck. Something’s wrong.” I pushed G behind a shrub near the path that led to the warehouse door.

None of Heinrich’s guards, with their characteristic thick eyeliner, see-through mesh shirts, and show muscles were anywhere in sight.

Seriously, his bodyguards looked like the type of guys who’d try to invite you to a Berlin rave so they could “daunce, daunce, daunce all night.”

They did not look like the trained killers they were.

“Maybe he’s just not here yet?” G noticed the lack of guards, and went for the most logical explanation.

“I can literally smell his overpowering eau de rich person cologne like he just walked up the path recently.”

“Stay here. I’ll go check it out.” He placed his arm in front of my body as if he was gluing me to the dry ground behind the shrub.

“When Earth becomes livable again.” I said as I started creeping toward the side of the building, avoiding the paths the warehouse lights illuminated.

G muttered something under his breath but knew it was pointless to argue.

By the time I reached the side door, I was already half way done unlocking it with the special code I used when meeting HE7 here. My heads-up display showed that six of the eight digits were plugged in.

“Let me borrow Bitsy.” G asked.

I handed him his favorite of my two ankle guns. Bitsy was an Earth gun from the early 1900s. Appropriate for a cowboy movie. I took out my trusty blade.

The door clicked open and we cautiously crouched down and walked in.

It was mostly dark inside, but I could see Heinrich standing with his back towards us, near a table 40 feet away. The rest of the warehouse was relatively empty, except for a few storage crates of who knows what.

“I was overreacting.” I whispered to G. “Todo bien.”

As if on cue, Heinrich slowly turned towards us. His right hand was locked to the table, but as the left side of his face rotated into view, I could see that his left hand was gripping his neck—blood spilling between, over, and around every finger.

There was no mistaking a cut like that.

A skilled operator was here just seconds ago. Someone capable of slitting a throat and disappearing into the night in moments.

Heinrich dropped to his knees, then fell flat on his face before I made it to him.

“G. We need to move. I used my code to get in here. They’ll think I did this. They’ll torture and kill me, and then they’ll kill you just for knowing me.”

He shrugged. “I told you about that cute face getting me killed.”