by J. S. Morin
“Why do you still fly with him?”
“He’s a good man and a good boss, just a shitty husband. Don’t go breaking any vows over him; he’s not worth it.”
# # #
The stairs clanged beneath Carl’s boots as he took them two at a time up to the common room. Mort sat on the couch with Adam, the two of them engrossed in a game of Omnithrust Racer. Carl hadn’t even known they had a copy of it in the ship’s computer, but right then he didn’t care.
“We’re good,” said Carl, catching his breath. “Roddy’s got everything back the way it belongs and Tanny just got me on the comm to say that the Tally-ho’s been out of our sensor range for six hours—hopefully that puts us out of theirs.”
Mort grunted.
Carl turned his attention to the racing game and saw that the two of them were neck and neck in the final straightaway of a course called “Tri-star Deathway,” according to the in-game display. Mort rarely played active games, but was faring surprisingly well. With any luck he wouldn’t get steamed and accidentally fry the controller if he lost.
“Yes!” Adam shouted, jumping from his seat. “That’s five in a row!” The game played a victory theme as Adam’s racer crossed the line in first place. Carl didn’t know if he was better off congratulating the kid for winning or making fun of him for beating an old wizard who couldn’t work a datapad.
Carl took the remote and shut off the display. “We’re good for astral any time, Mort.”
“Kid’s lucky, that’s all,” he grumbled. He threw the controller across the room. Just before it smashed against the wall, it slowed to a drift and set itself gently into its recharger. “How deep you need us?”
“Nothing fancy,” Carl replied. “Just someplace with a little zip, and none of the standard depths.”
Mort disappeared into his room and returned with a gnarled staff of authentic, Earth-grown oak, older than everyone on board the Mobius put together. Carl had never thought to ask, but he had always assumed it pre-dated the ban on cutting trees in Earth’s preserves. As Mort took up a position in the center of the common room, Carl keyed the comm panel by the door. “Keep out of the common room for a minute. Mort’s taking us astral.”
It was easy at times to think of Mort as just a grumpy old man who hated science. But watching him plant his staff in the center of the floor and begin his chant, it was hard to think of him as anything but a wizard. The words felt old, even though he had no idea what they meant. If God were the swearing type, Carl imagined that He would use some of those words in doing it. As the chant continued, symbols around the periphery of the common room floor began to glow a dull green.
“What are those?” Adam asked in a whisper, gaping at the sight.
“Nothing to worry about,” Carl whispered back. Mort didn’t get distracted easily, but it never hurt to be cautious. “We just do astral drive the old-fashioned way around here.”
“I mean on the floor.”
Carl shrugged. “Glyphs. Mort knows what they all do; ask him when he’s done if you want to know.”
Adam nodded absently, still staring at Mort.
When the chant ended, the glow in the glyphs faded and disappeared. Mort slouched down with a sigh and headed back to his quarters with the staff. “I need a nap.”
“How deep did you put us?” Carl asked. While the thrusters of the Mobius could send them in any direction through real space, it took wizardry to move perpendicular to reality. Wizards had dubbed the region where space compressed the “astral plane,” and the deeper a ship went, the faster it traveled relative to normal space. There were industry and guild standards that kept astral drive users slotted into standard depths, forming “lanes” and keeping communication and rescue efforts organized.
Mort just pointed over his shoulder at the speaker for the comm. A few seconds later, as Mort left the room, it crackled with Tanny’s voice from the cockpit. “We’re at a depth of six point eight, two, two and holding. Is Mort done?”
Carl hit the comm button with the butt of his fist. “Yeah, he’s going to nap it off. We’re good to go.”
“Soon as I convince the nav computer that this depth is legit, we’ll get underway. We should be at Willamette Station in a little over three hours.”
Adam’s head snapped up. “How’s that possible? It should be days from here.”
Carl gave the boy a sidelong glance. “You some expert on astral travel?” he asked with a chuckle. “We don’t keep Mort around for his personality.”
# # #
The Kearny system was just outside of what ARGO officially claimed as protected territory. None of the worlds were inhabited, but three of them showed promise for future terraforming. Kearny III and Kearny IV were two planets in the habitable zone with liquid water but no breathable atmosphere. The only ones living there were part of tiny colonies dedicated to scientific research. Set in a solar orbit between the two was Willamette Station. It was a floating outpost of commerce and civilization amid the lifeless system.
It also looked like a scrapyard that had developed its own gravity. There was no grand plan for the station’s layout or architecture. It had been founded when a pre-fab orbital habitat was hijacked by pirates and placed in orbit in the system. From there, it expanded when opportunistic businessmen convinced the owners that it could make money as a fueling station, then as a supply depot, and later as a refuge for those looking to do their business free from the overbearing eyes of ARGO patrols. Earth Navy designated the station and the surrounding system as lawless, but Willamette Station had plenty of rules.
Tanny guided the Mobius into the hangar they’d been assigned by Willamette traffic control. A faint blue haze parted for them as the ship pushed through the air lock force field. Dingy yellow overheads gave the hangar bay a sickly look, but the structure appeared solid. As they set down with a soft thump, barely noticeable due to the ship’s gravity compensator, a set of doors slid into place to cover the air lock. Carl hated in-hangar berths on space stations for that reason; watching from the cockpit, it made him feel like his ship was being devoured.
“We’re secured,” Roddy’s voice came over the comm.
Carl keyed the ship-wide comm. “We’re down, everyone. Enjoy the amenities while we’re here, but be back by oh-nine-hundred ship time tomorrow.”
On his way down to the cargo hold, he nearly ran into Esper and Adam. Pulling up short of the startled former priestess, he stuck out his hand. “Nice having you aboard. Good luck with the kid.” He tousled Adam’s hair, which prompted a flinch and a grimace from the boy. “You take good care of her, too. I find out you given her any trouble, I’ll sic Mriy on you.” He winked, in case Adam couldn’t tell he was joking.
The cargo bay door was open when Carl arrived. Roddy had just finished loading crates with their haul onto an anti-grav sled. It was too quick a job for Carl’s liking. A few pulsed computer cores and an assortment of semi-valuable personal effects weren’t much to refuel a starship on. He just hoped he could get enough for the escape pod to make up for the damage to the transport’s computers. They were leaving the pod in the ship, because it was either that or leave everything else behind; it would have taken the whole anti-grav sled to haul it. It was easy enough to describe to anyone who’d buy that sort of thing.
“Hop on,” Roddy said, jerking the thumb of his right foot toward the passenger seat.
Carl climbed aboard, smiling ruefully that no one even let him drive a grav sled—not that he’d have wanted to. It was just the principle of the matter. The sled sagged momentarily under Carl’s weight before it readjusted to the imbalance, but never came back fully level. “Shitty rentals. We should buy one of our own one of these days.”
“Maybe you should stick to vegetables,” Roddy replied. “Your species isn’t cut out to be omnivorous.”
“It’s not me; it’s the sled!”
Roddy shook his head and cracked open a can of beer. “You keep telling yourself that.” The sled needed
just two hands to drive, and that left Roddy free to drink and pilot at the same time.
The sled whizzed past the rest of the crew as they disembarked, and Carl held up a hand to wave. Esper noticed and raised a hand in reply. Adam just stood with his arms folded and his jaw set, eyes scanning the landing zone. There seemed something shrewd in the look, but Carl passed the notion off as the work of his imagination baiting his natural paranoia.
Tanny and Mriy would probably be off to find a holo-relay to watch—something with a bigger viewer than the Mobius boasted, and with new vids in from civilized space. If he was lucky, they’d poke around for a job while they were out. Mort would stay in the ship; Willamette Station wasn’t the sort of place that appreciated wizards. It was self-contained, fully sci-dependent for life support, with no outside atmosphere to fall back on. A magic-related mishap was the last thing anyone aboard wanted.
He hoped Esper and Adam managed to find a cheap ride back to ARGO space, but it didn’t seem likely. One of the downsides of living outside civilized space was that people charge extra to take you to and from it. They’d claim it was because of security worries, or because of concerns over having a passenger who was the sort who dealt outside the law, but it mostly came down to supply and demand. There weren’t a thousand transports leaving every hour, like the Earth-Mars shuttle service. Ten departures taking passengers might be a good day, and that was if you weren’t picky about getting to your destination directly.
“They’ll be fine,” Roddy said, catching Carl looking back.
“How can you be sure?”
Roddy chuckled. “They survived being with us. It’s all auto-pilot for them from here.”
# # #
Sprokytz was a typical junker. The equipment was all franchise-bought, the decor gaudy, with too many flashing lights and oversaturated colors. The three laakus working behind the counter passed items from one to the next, turning them over and examining each in detail. They muttered to one another in low voices, cognizant that Carl could understand their language—and of course, Roddy was one of their own kind. Outside in what passed for a road within Willamette station, two more laaku techs scanned the computer cores.
Carl browsed the shelves, daring any part of the oddball collection to catch his eye. A set of analog binoculars. A few well-worn kids’ toys. A datapad twenty years out of date. A little statue of someone’s idea of a well-endowed frog. Crap, the lot of it. Roddy was at the inventory kiosk, poking through the ship equipment Sprokytz kept in the warehouse.
“Anything worthwhile?” Carl asked, looking over Roddy’s shoulder. He had to bend down, since the screen was placed at a height that was a compromise between human ergonomic standard and laaku common accommodation.
Roddy didn’t look up. “I could build us a new ship from this stuff.”
“Anything we can afford?”
“Not unless you’ve been holding out on us,” Roddy replied.
“I wish,” Carl said, eyes drawn to the 2D image of a pair of XK-80 ion thrusters with fifty percent higher power output than the Mobius’s main engines. They were meant for an in-system racer, but that sort of detail had never stopped Roddy before. The Mobius was a testament to his ability to force disparate components into a working vessel.
Roddy cleared his throat. “You know, I never saw Chip spending much of his own share …”
Carl gave him a dirty look. “And you never saw him digitize it as fast as he earned it? You know he didn’t trust hard currency.”
“Well, maybe if you … or maybe Tanny happened to know his encryption code …”
“Even if I did, I’m not robbing my own crew,” Carl replied. “That money goes to his family … assuming anyone can even get at it. He never left me any codes.”
“Tanny’s his cousin.”
“Just drop it.”
Roddy sighed, looking longingly at the XK-80 ion engines. “That pile of shit we brought in won’t come close.”
“Maybe with the escape pod,” Carl said. “It’s in perfect working order. That’s gotta be rare as rain around here.”
Jekjo walked in from inspecting the computer cores. The laaku wiped an upper hand on his coveralls to clean away some of the grime and offered it to Carl. “Thanks for stopping by,” he said as he and Carl shook. Of all the non-terrestrial races, the laakus had most thoroughly adapted to live according to human norms. They learned Earth Standard English in primary school, watched human-made holos, and generally tried to act as human as their physiology allowed. Jekjo and his gang were old-fashioned, living outside ARGO space and keeping the old language, but Earth had rubbed off on them anyway.
“What’re you going to give me for the lot?” Carl asked.
Jekjo looked to his crew behind the counter. A series of looks and subtle gestures passed between them. Carl didn’t bother trying to puzzle any of it out; it was their own signaling system. Carl exchanged a look of his own with Roddy, and didn’t like what he saw. Roddy could read Jekjo’s body language better than he could, and Carl could already feel the pain in his bank account. He was disappointed before Jekjo even came back with a number.
“Eight hundred for the personals, thirty five for the cores,” Jejko pronounced after the conference concluded.
Carl’s eyes shot wide. “You can’t be serious. I was upfront about the cores being blanked; you don’t have to put the screws to me over it. Those are worth at least five-k to you.”
“I’m being generous on the personals because I like you, Carl,” Jekjo replied, lifting his hands in a helpless gesture. “You bring me stuff I can turn around pretty easy most times. This lot though … it’s a dud.”
“I also got an escape pod, came through in good shape, just needs a recharge on the life support.” Carl had hoped the pod would be icing on the cake. Now, he was just hoping to eat the icing.
“You said that it was a Berring class passenger transport?” Jekjo asked. Carl nodded, and Jekjo laughed. “There’s more escape pods for those heaps than you could ever fit onto the working ships. Those things are death traps. That thing’d be taking up space in my warehouse for years.”
“Someone could use it for a refit,” Roddy suggested.
Jekjo ignored him, and Carl felt a brief pang for his friend. Roddy did better dealing with laakus who didn’t know him personally. “How much can you give me?” Carl asked, firing the thrust reversers on his expectations.
Jekjo shook his head. “I can shove the jewelry and knick-knacks on a shelf and let them take up space, but I can’t afford to waste the room a worthless escape pod will take up. Can’t do it.”
“Rryzgat!” Carl swore, continually amused that his translator charm never converted the curses Mriy had taught him from her language. It certainly gave its best effort when he heard her use them.
“What’s that?” Jekjo asked, narrowing his simian eyes.
“Nothing,” Roddy said. “We’ll take the forty-three hundred for the lot.”
Jekjo picked at something in his teeth as he sized them up. “OK. You’ve got yourself a—”
“What if we threw in the grav sled?” Carl asked. Forty-three hundred was cutting things close. Even splitting things one fewer way, the ship’s share plus his own was barely going to cover fuel.
Roddy shot Carl a panicked look, which Carl pretended not to notice.
“That’s a rental,” Jekjo said with a frown.
“Bought it refurb,” Carl replied. “Got sick of renting one in every port. Figured I’d save a few terras having my own.”
Jekjo exchanged some gestures with his gang behind the counter, who had kept a respectful vigil as their boss negotiated. “I assume you’ve got documentation to back that up?” Jekjo asked.
Carl grinned. “Of course not. Same as you, I don’t keep anything on file that I don’t have to produce for an ARGO inspection.”
Jekjo stared at him for a moment. Carl could imagine the math at work in the laaku’s head. They both knew it was theft, but on a station the
size of Willamette, it was something that could get done. Jekjo could sit on the sled until Dynamik Transport wrote it off and forgot the whole matter; Carl would steer clear of the Kearny system for a while.
“I’ll give you thirteen thousand for it,” Jekjo offered. The crew behind the counter bobbed their heads in concurrence.
“Fifteen,” Carl countered.
Jekjo scowled. “Why can’t you people ever take an offer at face value?”
“Because I know you take the haggling into account. Besides, you’ll turn it around for a solid thirty.”
“Fine. That’s ninety thousand eight hundred,” Jekjo said. He stuck out a hand again and Carl shook it.
“Hard cash, of course,” Carl said with a wink.
# # #
They returned to the Mobius on foot, picking their way through the crowds on the pedestrian overpasses as anti-grav vehicles sped by beneath. The smells from the restaurants tugged at Carl’s stomach, begging him to enter with scents of grilled meats and fresh bread. But there was a heap of money in his pocket, most of it belonging to his crew, and Carl felt the weight of it sagging his pockets. He needed to get back to the ship and at least stow Tanny, Mort, and Mriy’s shares. Roddy insisted on skimming his cut before they left the Sprokytz.
“You know we lose our deposit on that grav-sled,” Roddy reminded him.
“Yup.”
“You know we’re in a heap of trouble when we leave port without returning it,” Roddy added.
Carl shrugged. “We report it stolen, we apologize … they’ll get over it.”
“What’re we gonna do with that damn escape pod? Air-lock it once we get out of system?”
“Nah,” Carl replied. “We’ll keep trying. Someone’s bound to take it off our hands.”
As they approached the Mobius, they saw Esper pacing the hangar outside. She was still dressed in the clothes she had taken from the haul; Carl had assumed a clothing store would have been one of her first stops. She was wringing her hands and watching the entrance. When Carl and Roddy approached she perked up instantly.
