43 Days to Oblivion

by J. D. Oppenheim

  “We fought together,” said Jolo. “Koba, let’s ease out aways and snag a few floaters. We gotta be gone in five.”

  Barc

  39 days left

  Jolo and the crew grabbed three of the Derbinster’s floaters as fast as they could. There was no time to be picky so Koba got the Argossy as close as possible and Greeley snagged the boxes with the magna-hook. He suited up and then stood on the edge of the open cargo bay door staring out into space, one thin safety wire preventing him from flying out into the great black expanse.

  Greeley aimed the line gun attached to the side of the bay and pulled the trigger. It had a smooth hydraulic kick that he enjoyed, the hook shooting out into space, line feeding out like the tail of a snake. The magna-hook, which wasn’t really a hook but an electro-magnet, would stick if it got anywhere near metal, and then wouldn’t let go unless he flipped the switch.

  The only check they did was to make sure the box wasn’t full of HWC. They ended up with one parts box, a bio box full of medical grade tubing and small vacuum pumps, and a green box that turned out to be full ornamental plants that wouldn’t last a day on Barc. So two out of three wasn’t too bad, but Jolo knew he had to add the cost to repair the Argossy.

  When they dropped down into Barc’s atmosphere Jolo was reminded of why he liked Duval better. Barc was covered in ocean. Only about ten percent of the surface was land so most solid ground was man-made. There were some smaller settlements under water, but they were experimental and upkeep was more expensive than the man-made islands. Barc was the largest exporter of seafood in the Fed system and operated giant fish harvesters all over the planet.

  Each island was numbered, and Jolo and crew set down on 226, which was the best island to unload items with what Jolo liked to call “ownership issues”. On 226 you could land in an open dock without the usual Federation hassles like valid ship ids and current captain’s auth codes.

  Jolo, Koba, Greeley and Hurley stood on large, metal platform next to the Argossy and stared out into the ocean. The sky was dark and angry and the waves, about 50 meters below, churned and white-capped.

  “Welcome home, boys,” said Jolo, trying to imagine Katy, Marco and the whole crew living there, but his words were lost in the howling wind that blew in off the great expanse of gray water. Jolo stood there staring out at two ends of a giant harvester, a massive net between them, his hair whipping around his face, the salty spray touching his lips. The harvester bots on either end of the net were massive. They floated above the water and held half a kilometer of netting that caught the large mandrale, kazen, breems and other fish that were sent out all over Fed space.

  Koba started yelling something that Jolo didn’t hear and then pointed out beyond the harvester: a black ship hovering just above the water a few hundred meters out. And then it dove down into the ocean and disappeared. Even on Barc, the BG won’t leave us alone, thought Jolo.

  Jolo was anxious to check out Greeley’s “spread,” a tiny stretch of man-made land not too far from 226. He figured he and Marco, and maybe Katy, could hide out there and take their time finding their own spot. But business came first. They headed to a small room under a giant pachinko parlor owned by Besen Hess, who could move anything. Anything except hydrangeas.

  The pachinko was easy to spot. It had large pink and green banners outside and the front had a false facade full of neon lights. The tubes snaked across the entire surface in long wavy rows, the colors undulating and changing like the building was alive with electricity. Inside the noise was deafening: each machine buzzed and whistled. A steady, rhythmic music with a heavy bass pounded away in the background.

  Jolo strolled through at a fast clip, resisting the urge to cover his ears. He wanted to cut the music and tell everyone to get out, to go live. This place was a slow death. On Jolo’s first trip to Barc, he’d put some hard earned credits into one of the noisy machines and the little silver balls bounced around and it made a lot of cool sounds, but in five minutes he’d lost 100 credits.

  “Vargas, I’ll take the parts and the med box,” Bessen said in his basement office, the pachinko noise mostly gone except for the steady thump of the bass beat. “You can have the plants. Why’d you bring that shite here?” He wiped the sweat off his forehead with a brown towel and stuck a thumb under his thin belt. Jolo wondered how such a tiny bit of leather could keep his massive girth from exploding out over the plastic table. Besen jabbed at the screen in front of him, numbers popped up, then were swiped away, then he scratched the back of his head and grimaced. Jolo knew this was all just part of the show. And then the fat, sweaty man started poor mouthing: “Well, the med box might could go to Anders ‘cause negotiations with the ice harvesters have gone south, but I just sent a box there…” He started to go on but Jolo didn’t need to hear any more.

  “250 each,” Jolo said, “you take the plants for free, and send out Billy and his crew to repair my ship and you got a deal. Otherwise, I’m taking my shite to Shuri Kanazawa on Mephis.”

  “200 and I fix your broken ship. Again. And Shuri can kiss my arse.”

  “Done.” Jolo smiled, he thought he might have to go down to 150, but Besen was a little quick to settle. And then he noticed Besen’s face looked pale, and the bags under his eyes were a little darker than normal. He was always out of breath but he seemed like a man who’s head was just above water and needed more air. “You okay, fat man?” said Jolo.

  “Perfect, get the frack out,” he yelled.

  Jolo turned to leave, but stopped. “I saw a black ship go under out on the platform,” he said. And then Besen looked up at him and sighed, started scratching his head again, his fingers lost in curly white hair.

  “You seen the water lately?” said Besen. “It ain’t as blue as it’s been. The tannin levels rose, maybe from all the Duval rock we use to support the islands, I don’t know, but its been hurting the harvest. Luckily the Grana have stepped in to try and fix it. Turns out the worms love breems, so they’ve started installing water conditioners on the floor. Ain’t seen no good from it yet.”

  “You sure that’s what they’re really doin’?” said Koba. But Jolo held out his hand and he stopped.

  Besen gave him a funny look and continued. “Add to that my last rock shipment from Duval didn’t come, or maybe was rerouted to another island with a little more political pull. I dunno. Nothing to worry you. The Crab Shack is still on level 19 if you are interested.” Since land on Barc was scarce, things tended to grow upwards into the sky. The crew usually ate at a greasy little restaurant that had some of the best crab cakes on this end of the galaxy.

  “I wanna see one of the BG water conditioners,” said Jolo.

  “Thanks for your concern, but I don’t think the input of a Duval pirate, even one so uh, well-regarded as yourself, is gonna help the ocean scientists.”

  “That ain’t it.”

  “Well, there ain’t nothing there to steal.” Jolo just stood there and frowned, his arms folded. The fat man sighed, sucked in another gulp of air. “Ok. Level 42. A man named Rat has a water bird you can use and he won’t be asking any questions or generating any logs.” Bensen waved his hand at the door which meant their business was over.

  ……

  “Okay, here’s the deal,” said Rat, a skinny Barcian, standing in his makeshift office behind a laundry service. “You got four hours and then the little boat gotta come home. You get into trouble, you stole the it. You mention my name to any Fed or local Barc official and I will deny everything and then I’ll—” at this point Jolo and Greeley gave him the hard stare and he faltered just a bit. “I’ll, uh, report your asses to the authorities.” Jolo smiled. Rat was most certainly wanted by the authorities.

  “That thing got a gun?” said Greeley.

  “Y’all Duvalite rock humpers ain’t too swift, are ye? What are you gonna do, shoot a fish?” said Rat, shaking his head.

  The little craft was waiting there on platform 03 lower level. It was a two-seater so
Jolo left Koba and Hurley eating crab cakes on level 19 above the pachinko and neither one of them seemed upset to be left out.

  The wind had died down and there was a bit of blue now in the sky. Jolo looked beyond the platform to a stretch of white sand beach where an old man was pushing a small skiff out into the water.

  “What the hell’s that?” said Greeley. By then the man had jumped into the wooden vessel and was rowing out into the ocean.

  “It’s ancient tech,” said Jolo. “Used to call ‘em boats.”

  “You mean it just sits there on the water but ain’t got no fuel cells? Ain’t nothing holding it up? I for sure ain’t getting in one of them crazy things. It’s gotta a damn engine mounted under it is all.”

  “Are you such a dumbass?”

  “You don’t know how it works.”

  “Yeah, I do. It just floats. ‘Cause its a boat.”

  “Right. It floats ‘cause it’s got an engine under it. Dumbass.”

  Jolo queried his computer and spit the data right back at Greeley.

  “An object pushes water out of the way to make room for itself, which is called displacement,” said Jolo. “Gravity, determined by an object’s weight, pulls the object down. And buoyancy, determined by the weight of the displaced water, pulls the object up. So if the downward force is less than the upward force, then object will float. How’s that?”

  Greeley stood there, wind tossing his hair around, and stared at Jolo with a sour look on his face. “You know, I expect that type of shite from the likes of Koba, or the one-armed synth, but it really scares me when you pull crap like that out of your ass. Like you reading from a screen or something.” He turned and watched as the old man made it further out into the rough waters. “Damn thing’s gotta an engine under it.”

  Jolo smiled at Greeley and they climbed into the tiny cockpit of the water bird. The two large men barely fit, and when the clear bubble canopy closed down from above Jolo felt like he was back in the escape pod again. His head was nearly touching the canopy and his left arm was pressed against the hull.

  Greeley looked at Jolo with narrowed eyes and lips tight together. “I don’t swim.”

  “Ain’t never seen a water boat and can’t swim. Don’t make sense you thinkin’ of buying a spread here,” Jolo said, and then hit the large red button on the console that released the small craft from the docking clamps and dropped them into the sea.

  For a moment Jolo could see nothing but bubbles and white water, and then everything cleared and their visibility was fairly good—white sand bottom, orange plants floating past, light rays breaking through here and there. Jolo engaged the small engine and the water bird jumped forward. The onboard computer screen showed their position and current depth and Jolo headed straight for the spot where Koba had seen the black ship diving into the water earlier that day.

  “Why are we doing this?” said Greeley. We should be checking out my little stretch of island.”

  “Just a hunch,” said Jolo.

  “’Bout what?”

  “Black ships.”

  “Shite on the black ships.”

  They headed in the direction of the BG ship, or where Jolo thought he’d seen the ship, but after fifteen minutes of endless sandy bottom, orange plants, and the occasional school of breem, Jolo popped up to get a visual on 226. They could just make out the large buildings covering 226 and guessed they were close, but Jolo knew they might be out here for days and never find anything. The ocean was vast and suddenly his water bird was tiny.

  They floated for a moment wondering what to do. “This thing ain’t got a gun, but how about a scanner?” said Greeley.

  Jolo touched the water bird’s tiny screen and it showed their position. There were other letters on the bottom and Greeley hit the “S”. “S for scanner,” he said. It was too easy. The scanner popped up and instantly a small dot appeared a few hundred meters back towards 226 that registered a slight heat signature. There were other heat signs that were moving that Jolo figured were schools of fish. He headed for the one small dot that wasn’t moving.

  They came on it quicker than Jolo thought. It was a large gray box. The base was about the same size as one of the towers. Jolo put the small craft right over the structure and his heart sank. He could hear it, just like the fake listening stations. The water bird’s screen registered the heat signature in a tight circle right beneath them. The circle was moving around and around. There was a drill under the box.

  “Okay, can we go check out my spread now?” said Greeley.

  “No. We gotta get back to Duval.”

  “Huh?”

  “The BG are gonna blow up Barc, too.”

  Jolo had the water bird back with a few minutes to spare. He found Besen in the bar under the Crab Shack on 18 drinking the blue synth-ale popular on the outer planets. The locals called it “juice.”

  “That shite’ll kill you,” said Jolo.

  “You always were too good for it,” said the big man. Jolo paused for a second and pondered his former self, a man, like him, who didn’t go for the synth ale or any of the other drugs that he instinctively rejected. Besen snapped him out of it. “Why are you here? The money was sent as promised.”

  “I know,” Jolo said, and took a good hard look at the sweaty man in front of him. Jolo hoped he would listen.

  “Well, out with it,” said Besen. So Jolo told him everything: the stolen galaxite, the BG boats attacking freighters, the listening towers on Duval that weren’t really towers, how Vellos actually fell, and now the big gray boxes popping up on the sea floor in Barc.

  “Why are you telling me this?” said Besen. “You want me to raise up Barc in defense of that dirty little rock next door? I didn’t think you were one to get involved.”

  “I’m not. I thought I owed it to you. You were the first to take a shipment from me even though I was pretty hot at the time.”

  “Still are. But don’t worry about the large, black mechs. They ain’t up to nothing on this end. And I seriously doubt they’re up to anything on Duval.”

  “Something’s going on,” said Jolo, leaning in closer. “I know it.”

  “BG hitting freighters? Towers with drills?” Besen shook his head and downed the last of his juice.

  “How about the price of galaxite,” said Jolo. “I bet it’s up. Check it out.”

  Besen leaned back in his chair and smiled at Jolo. “You’re full of shite you crazy pirate.” And then he raised his hand and a pale girl on hover skates in a tiny skirt brought him another glass of blue.

  Towers

  On Duval

  37 days left

  Koba brought the Argossy down into the ravine slow and careful. He was sweating by the time they made it to Marco’s, but proud that he hadn’t scraped the side of the cliff. At first Jolo thought they were under attack as a black Cruiser emerged from the main hangar, but then he saw a Fed frigate come out right behind that, both ships with a green star on the side. They were Radar Mantis’s pirate ships. There were smaller hover craft at the bottom of the ravine, some coming in, others heading out in different directions. When the hover boats cleared, Jolo could make out the person directing traffic: it was Katy.

  “What are they doin’?” said Greeley.

  “Mobilizing,” said Jolo. “They think they can save this rock.”

  “Where we gonna run to?” said Koba.

  “I dunno. Tichel?” said Jolo. “First order of business is convincing everyone to leave. They don’t know about Barc. That should bring them to their senses.”

  Jolo broke the news about Barc to Katy and Marco in the atrium later that day. “That makes sense,” said Marco. “Those bastards are gonna cripple the Fed, then crush the core planets.”

  “Duval’s got alacyte, Barc’s got fish harvesting,” said Katy.

  “Guess what those Fed meal packs are made of?” said Marco.

  “So y’all ready to start packing?” said Jolo. He was looking right at Katy. It’s a done dea
l, he thought. They’ve got to come now.

  “They aren’t gonna take this planet,” said Katy.

  “How can you say that? Look around you,” said Jolo. He put his hand on her shoulder. He wanted to go back to the day they were on the hoverbike together. He wished they’d just kept going past the reclamator and never found out about the BG’s plan.

  “We’re gonna start taking down the towers.”

  “They’ll just put up another one.”

  “I don’t think so. Merthon and George have put their brains on this one. They’ve calculated the amount of alacyte it’s gonna take to finish the towers. Then they estimated the amount of metal they’ve mined from here and the other fringe planets and the bottom line is they are stretched too thin. They can’t possibly protect all of the towers. Merthon says if we can destroy 47% of the drills then even if they dump galaxite into the core the planet will remain stable.”

  Jolo was beside himself. He had the urge to run again, but knew that wouldn’t help. Katy gave him a hug and stared up at him, smiling. He warmed up a little. “Mantis is gonna take down a tower. You wanna come? Destroying BG property always seems to cheer you up.”

  “How’s he gonna do it?”

  “I think he’s gonna hit it with two gunships at once.”

  “We figure if we can take down enough towers it’ll give us some time,” said Marco.

  “Time to leave?” said Jolo.

  “Time to convince the Fed the position they are in,” said Marco.

  “They’ll never listen. I’ve tried,” said Jolo

  “Bertha is reaching out to her core world contacts now,” said Katy. “There’s hope.”

  “Faith in the Fed will just get you killed,” said Jolo.