Love Machine

by Chris Lowry

  Benedict sighed.

  “I mean, I’ve seen men die before. But not right there you know? Close enough I could reach out and touch them. I was a pilot in the war. Were you in?”

  He didn’t wait for an answer.

  “You look like a bunch of guys I ferried around. But that’s just a look, okay? You could just be the disciplined type. This guy, I was talking to him and bam, he was dead. Just like that.”

  “You’re not going to shut up, are you?”

  “I’ll try,” Tinker said. “But I don’t like to make promises I can’t keep, so if I’m being one hundred percent honest, I’ll probably fail.”

  “I could beat your face in until you couldn’t make a sound,” said Benedict.

  Tinker thought he might be serious.

  The thick man sounded serious.

  Since he didn’t move though, he might just be letting Tinker know what he could do, as opposed to what he would do.

  “I don’t think that would make the trip any more fun,” he said. “Besides, if you accidentally kill me, you’d have to live with my body stinking up the place and who wants that?”

  “It would be easier if you shut the hell up.”

  “Probably,” said Tinker.

  He figured he would at least try to be a good hold mate and travel companion by respecting the man’s wishes.

  He lasted six minutes.

  He studied the dark hold around them while he waited. There wasn’t much to see. Boxes mostly. Wooden shipping crates that were throwbacks to a bygone day.

  Tinker figured Ping and his crew had stumbled across an abandoned cache hold and claimed them under space maritime law. Or took them from someone who did.

  Or maybe it was tribute to Mr. Kim, he shrugged as his eyes drifted over metal containers of various sizes, marked with station markings from a hundred destinations across the galaxy.

  They were supposed to be shipped straight, but Tinker knew that for every box that made a straight hop toward Mars, three more found a more circuitous route along the way.

  He should know, because more than several of those routes and goods were ran by him.

  His head stopped moving at the box by his hold companion’s feet and stared. The space between the containers was a hole of blackness even darker than the air around them thanks to a box that covered the top, blocking all light.

  But Tinker could have swore something in the darkness moved.

  He glanced at his companion. The man sprawled across his constructed bench, arms folded over his thick chest, eyes closed.

  Whatever it was that moved was closer to him than to me, Tinker thought.

  Which was a good thing. It meant that if it was a space ghost or monster, it would grab him first and Tinker wouldn’t have to outrun either of them.

  He shook his head.

  There was no such thing as space ghosts, he told himself.

  Not that they discovered yet, he answered. And most of space is unexplored.

  Which sent a shiver up his spine that he tried to fight.

  The darkness noticed and swirled again, sending another shiver and shimmy.

  Whatever it was, monster, or ghost or space beast, it was watching him.

  That meant it was probably planning on eating him. Even now, Tinker imagined it was calculating angles so it could leap out at him and take them both by surprise.

  He was going to have to work hard to flip the switch and surprise it back.

  Ping checked him for weapons, but all anyone ever checked for was a blaster or a back up laser, or a vibro-blade knife. Since Tinker didn’t carry any of those, everyone thought he was unarmed.

  He closed his fingers on the large buckle at the bottom of his leather bomber jacket and twisted out a three inch arrow shaped blade with a discreet turn of his wrist.

  Now whatever it was, ghost, beast, monster or space dragon was in trouble.

  Not really a dragon thought, he watched the darkness with overlarge eyes, because a dragon would be kill and kill him like in an instant.

  But he was ready for anything else.

  All he had to do was distract it.

  He turned his head away from the black opening and yawned as he stretched his arms.

  Then he launched himself from his seat with a yowl designed to freeze the monster or ghost or beast or dragon and buy him a few precious seconds to get the jump on it.

  “Die dragon!”

  The man on the bench across from him moved like plasma lightning. He leaned up, caught Tinker by the throat and held him off the ground.

  Tinker scrabbled his toes against the metal decking, fighting to breathe a warning.

  He dropped the flat arrow blade so he could grip the thick wrist and hold himself off the decking.

  “Ghoah-,” he choked.

  “Trying to attack a man in his sleep?” the man growled.

  “Gack,” Tinker answered.

  “Know what I do to cowards like you?”

  “Ghurk!”

  Tinker let go with one hand and pointed. It put more pressure on his throat.

  He tried to gurgle out a warning as the shadows swirled behind the guy holding him.

  He watched stars sparkle purple and blue in front of his eyes before the darkness closed in and took them both.

  CHAPTER NINE

  He blinked back tears as he forced his eyes open. He could see the ceiling of the hold, feel the cold deck underneath his fingertips and seeping through the butt of his pants.

  At least he wasn’t dead, he thought. Then he remembered that the beast ghost space monster was probably chowing down on the other guy right now and saving him for a late night snack.

  He lifted his head.

  “You’re up,” said a woman’s voice.

  “I told you I didn’t kill him,” a man answered.

  Tinker shoved up on his elbows.

  His hold companion was sprawled back in his bench, and Tinker’s seat was occupied by a wispy woman covered from head to toe in a long silver robe and habit.

  Her thin face was attractive, gaunt enough to turn her cheekbones razor sharp, which served to highlight ice blue eyes that almost glowed against the habit that hid her hair.

  “I can see the marks on his neck,” she said.

  “I’m okay,” Tinker said.

  Or at least he tried to say that. It came out as a croaking rasp, more frog than human and he shifted his weight to one elbow so he could assess the damage with the other hand.

  His throat hurt, inside and out. The skin on either side was tender as if a vice like grip squeezed from the outside in.

  “Hurts?” the woman asked.

  He decided to nod instead of answer.

  She nodded back, her intoxicating eyes full of sympathy. She held out a collapsible cup full of steaming liquid.

  Tinker sat all the way up and took it from her.

  “Thanks,” he grunted.

  It sounded a little like thanks. Close enough that she took his meaning since she smiled.

  He sipped it and made a face.

  “Tea,” she said. “It will help with the pain.”

  He took another sip and tried not to retch. He could feel it burning down his throat and dropping into his stomach where it expanded out toward his limbs.

  And it did help.

  “Thanks,” he said again and this time it came out as a rasp.

  “Healer’s tea,” she said.

  “You’re a-”

  “Let it work,” she said and glanced at the man. “Hugh, tell him you’re sorry.”

  “He was trying to kill me while I slept,” Hugh said.

  “I-”

  “I think he was trying to kill me,” the kind woman said.

  Hugh turned an eye toward Tinker.

  “That true?” he asked in a voice that made Tinker wish he could slip through the cold floor.

  Or throw the hot tea in the man’s face to buy time to escape.

  “I thought it was a space ghost,” he mana
ged to rasp.

  “A space ghost?”

  Tinker shrugged.

  “They’re out there.”

  “Or a dragon?” the woman snickered.

  “Nun’s don’t snicker,” said Tinker.

  “A dragon?” Hugh demanded.

  “A space dragon,” Tinker nodded. “It’s a thing.”

  “No it’s not.”

  “It could be,” said Tinker.

  “It’s not,” Hugh answered.

  “Ships have been attacked, and the survivors said that’s what it was. They attack and kill everyone aboard, take all of the treasure.”

  Tinker looked around at the boxes that surrounded them.

  “I’ve never heard of them.”

  “There’ve been reports.”

  “Who made these reports?” Hugh sneered. “The survivors after they kill everybody?”

  Tinker opened his mouth to argue.

  “My throat’s killing me,” he said as he took another sip of tea.

  “Dragons,” Hugh scoffed. “In space.”

  “The Universe is full of mysteries,” said the sister coming to Tinker’s defense. “Every day we learn something new, so to dismiss anything is to close your eyes to the wonder.”

  “That’s what I said,” Tinker slurped.

  “Space ghosts and dragons,” Hugh reminded him.

  Tinker studied the woman sitting in his seat. He almost stood up and asked her to budge over, so he could get his butt warm, but he was afraid Hugh would get pissy and choke him out again.

  He shifted from one cheek to the other, giving each a few seconds of respite from the relentless cold.

  “So Sister,” he said. “What’s a woman like you doing on a ship like this?”

  He tried to remember not to wiggle his eyebrows, and mostly succeeded.

  Hugh shifted behind him, and Tinker glanced over his shoulder to make sure the man wasn’t planning to punch him in the back of the head or anything like that.

  “I’m just asking,” he held up one hand.

  “The Silver Sister holds her own counsel,” Hugh growled.

  “Hey man, don’t I know it,” Tinker smiled and shifted a little closer to her. “I hold my own counsel a lot. It’s the only way to talk to someone as witty and charming as I am.”

  He tapped the small metal mug she gave him against the toe of her boot.

  It earned him a smile.

  “We are travelling incognito,” she told him.

  “I got here out-cognito.”

  She snorted. Hugh groaned.

  “See,” said Tinker. “Just a couple of friends having a good time, making the best of our travel time together. No ghosts or making fun of dragons, which pisses them off, by the way.”

  He motioned his empty mug toward Hugh.

  “And you do not want to piss off space dragons. Trust me. Now if we only had something a little stronger to pass the time.”

  “Funny you should mention that,” said Hugh.

  He reached for Tinker.

  The pilot shrunk back and tried not to whimper as the big man’s hand came for him.

  He plucked the cup from his hand and passed it back to the Silver Sister.

  “What say we break out the good stuff?” Hugh smirked.

  She shook her head, but still took the mug from him and opened up one of the boxes she was sitting beside.

  Tinker gaped at the weird contraption inside. There was a copper keg with coiled wire on top, an electric burner underneath running off of a battery.

  The wire twisted and turned in a strange configuration that terminated above a jar locked in a holder.

  The Sister twisted a tiny spigot on the wire, unlocked the jar and passed it to Hugh.

  The big man slopped clear liquid into the mug and passed it back to Tinker.

  “What is it?”

  “Moonshine,” said Hugh.

  He pulled a cup out of his coat and filled it too.

  “But we’re not on the moon,” Tinker sniffed.

  It smelled slightly medicinal and burned his nose.

  “Starshine then,” the Silver Sister poured a mug of her own before replacing the jar and turning the tap back on.

  Tinker took a sip and started coughing. He coughed left and right, fell back onto his elbow and tried to beat the fire burning in his throat with the flat of his head.

  “One day, my friend, there will be faster than light travel, but today is not that day. Today is the day we drink the fruits of our labor.”

  He held up his jar, took a sip and fell into a coughing fit.

  “Potatoes of our labor,” the Silver Sister said as she took a sip.

  In a moment, she too was off the box she had adopted as a seat and coughing, the burning searing pain in her chest spreading down both arms, down her torso and washing over her legs like a tide of pain.

  Tinker’s head cleared, and he blinked tears out of his watery eyes and wiped his leaking nose.

  “Smooth,” Hugh settled back onto his box and picked up the empty jar.

  Tinker rolled up and squatted next to him, an occasional wet cough working its way into the silence of the cargo hold as they watched the jar fill up drip by drip.

  CHAPTER TEN

  He never did find out where the Silver Sister was going, nor why her protector and bodyguard was with her.

  They did share with him the blueprints for a simple whiskey still set up that he planned to install on the NC 17 just as soon as he found it, and that was trade enough for him.

  Tinker wandered the corridors of the expansive space station, searching the open docking ports that he could access and peering through smudged and dirty windows to those he couldn’t as he hunted.

  Even though the station belonged to Mr. Kim, the notorious gangster only occupied a section of it.

  The rest fell under other gangsters and warlords who owed fealty and tribute to the mafia kingpin.

  Tinker did his best to avoid them all.

  Whenever someone started to take too much interest in him or his search, he hurried back to the central section of the station, a mish mash smorgasbord of people living in an eclectic array of nationalities and endeavors.

  There was, of course, bars and brothels and though he was low on credits to the point of being non-existent, Tinker found his steps returning to the same drinking hole time and time again.

  It was called Garth’s and it was the kind of place he liked. The booze was cheap, even if he couldn’t afford it, the bartender surly and it was full of women.

  That was pretty much his main requirement for any establishment.

  He considered himself lucky.

  Most of the smaller stations had large contingents of men. It was just the way space expansion worked. Men went for the blue collar jobs that life in the void called for.

  But on the larger space stations, the majority of the population were women.

  It even outpaced the gender curve on earth, where fifty eight percent of the nine billion left were female.

  By the looks of it, this station topped seventy percent and a lot of them liked Garth’s.

  Tinker sat on a barstool watching two women debate the finer points of interstellar warfare and how they would have defeated the Martians when Musk declared independence from Earth.

  Tinker had fought for Musk as a pilot, so he considered weighing in on their orbital bombardment debate, but instead, he snaked a half empty drink from a passing waitress after she cleaned off a table and sipped while he studied the crowd.

  “You going to sit here all night and drink my booze?” a woman’s voice cut through his study of the room.

  Tinker turned his head slow, ready to bolt for the door if needed.

  A long tall woman in leather pants and a halter top crossed her thin arms over her chest and cocked her hip to one side.

  Tinker didn’t believe in love at first sight.

  That was something for school aged children and grunt space marines about to ship out for po
lice action on Mars. Love was something people wrote about, sang about, made films about, but he knew from a vast array of experience that it was not real.