by J. S. Morin
The two of them watched the battle unfold. The cherubic, colorful creatures with their absurd and oft impractical-looking weapons clashed in the middle of the board. They grunted and squished as they attempted to hack one another to pieces. Carl’s squad was big and brutish, and tried to occupy the center of the battlefield. Mort’s squad spread out and picked at the edges of Carl’s defenses. There was nothing to do but watch and wait, as the commands were preset prior to the game’s beginning.
“Come on … come on …” Carl breathed, clenching his fists. Every creature of his was stronger and tougher than any of Mort’s, yet Mort was gaining the upper hand. When the last of Carl’s minions expired with a melodramatic “Euuuaaa!”,the game played a happy little tune and pronounced Mort the winner.
The old wizard chuckled. “You try that plan every few battles you know. All big dumb brutes just doesn’t work against a competent opponent.”
Carl tipped back in his chair and sighed. “I just wanted something straightforward to work for once. Why does everything need to be complicated?”
Mort twisted his lips; it was a facial shrug, as far as Carl could tell. “Just the way the universe works. You got no business complaining; you think you got where you are today by playing it straight?”
“I know. I know. I just feel like I deserve a break now and then,” Carl said. “Something with someone shooting at me, and I can shoot back … not that I want to get shot.”
“Navy’s always recruiting,” Mort said with a grin.
Carl yanked his datacards out of the game board and began sorting through them. “Yeah, and have them put me back on Earth, teaching twitchy teenagers how to fly? And another thing, how’d I end up playing ferry to those two again? I’ve never taken a job with such a sketchy payout.”
“You’d just gotten short-ended on our last haul, plus a few glandular inconveniences clouding your thinking.”
“She’s not my type,” Carl replied.
Mort snickered. “Dark science or no, she’s any man’s type who hasn’t got himself situated. Plus, there’s Adam. Man can’t feel like a proper man if he can’t look after a kid.”
“Even if the kid’s comet cold when you rescue him? Mort, I tell you, the kid’s not right in the head. You’d think we picked him up from school, not a kidnapping.”
Mort shook his head. “Dark science, my boy. It’s not pretty. Speaking of which, you should go talk to her and get it out of your system. Oh, and if you want the boy out of the room for say … an hour or two, just tell him I wanted to try Neptune Squad.”
“You’re incorrigible.”
“Why would I want to be corriged?” Mort asked with a wink.
# # #
Carl knocked softly on the door to Chip’s old quarters, wondering how long it would be until he stopped thinking of it as Chip’s. Since each of the crew quarters on the Mobius was a separate escape pod, it was possible he could just trade it in for a new one; Carl had been thinking a lot about what to do with escape pods of late. It was a shame that the one in the cargo hold was incompatible. Even Roddy was unlikely to be able to force it to fit.
There was no answer from inside, and Carl had lifted his knuckles to knock louder when the door opened. Esper peeked out before opening the door wider to let Carl inside. “Captain?” she whispered. Adam was sleeping on Chip’s bed, still dressed with shoes and everything, on top of the blankets.
“Yeah, thought he might be sleeping it off,” Carl whispered back. “Rough day. Can you join me …” Carl paused. He was about to suggest his quarters, but with Mort’s teasing fresh in his mind, he changed his course. “… down in the cargo hold? We need to talk.”
Esper didn’t question him, but followed Carl up the stairs and through the common room. Mort gave a disapproving scowl as he fought with the holovid controls, but said nothing. Down in the cargo hold, Roddy and Mriy were prying and cutting the lids off the stolen crates, many of which were sealed shut. They both looked up at the sound of footsteps on the landing.
“You two take a break,” Carl called down as he descended. “Give Mort a hand with the holovid and find something to watch.”
“C’mon, we were just getting to the fun part,” Roddy griped. “These Grayson & Wesson locks took forever to bust open.”
Mriy nodded in agreement. “Go mate in your own quarters.”
“What’d she say?” Esper asked quietly.
“She wants to see what we got,” Carl lied softly, “same as Roddy.” He got down to the cargo floor and peered over Roddy to see what they were excited about. “What do we have?”
“Manifest’s encrypted, so we only know as we open them,” Roddy said. He lifted the lid on one with a lower hand. “This one’s just a sniff of the ion trail.” Inside, there was a rack of disintegrator rifles, UniDef Systems’ Adjudicator Mk VII series.
Carl let out a low whistle. “That crate’s worth almost as much as this ship.”
Roddy snorted. “Sure, and anyone missing a shipment of these babies gets word we boosted them, we’re not just dusted, we’re particles.”
“Problem for later,” Carl replied. “Now, go grab a beer and watch some Samolith or something with Mort.”
“The Tri-Annual Hunt might be on relay,” Mriy said.
Carl held up his hands and ushered Mriy and Roddy toward the stairs. “Whatever the three of you can agree on. Hell, grab Tanny and make a party of it; not like there’s much to watch for in the shallow astral. Just get a move on.”
Roddy fixed Carl with a glare and a meaningful look at the crates as he departed, adding the rubbing fingers gesture humans used for “money.”
Carl replied with a less couth gesture after making sure Esper wasn’t looking.
“So what did you want to talk to me about?” she asked once the door to the main crew compartment closed.
Carl ran a hand through his hair as he tried to decide how to put it. It was odd: he could lie to a man with a gun pointed at his head, or a ship with its guns trained on the Mobius and never so much as stutter over his words. But the truth and a pretty pair of eyes looking back at him and he turned into a blathering idiot.
“It’s Adam.”
“Yes … I’ve been thinking about him, too,” Esper replied, crossing her arms. “I don’t think I’m telling you where to bring him until we get to Mars. I don’t trust you not to leave me stranded somewhere along the way if I tell you before then.”
“You think I’m above knocking on two billion doors to get my reward?” Carl asked. He closed his eyes and shook his head; he couldn’t afford to get pulled into a contest of clever one-upsmanship. “That’s not the point. How did they find Adam?”
Esper blinked. “What do you mean?”
“How did they know he was on Willamette Station? We don’t exactly publish an itinerary. The only ship that even knew we were in this sector was the Tally-ho.”
“Maybe Harmony Bay has connections inside Earth Navy …”
Carl pointed a finger at her. “Ah HA! I thought of that, but we hid Adam from them. I don’t think those techs of Penny-Toad’s were faking when they said they found nothing out of the ordinary. Mort fooled them good.”
“Maybe they have scanners installed at all the starports …”
“At every starport in the quadrant? Including Willamette Station, which isn’t even in ARGO space? No, I’m thinking he might have a tracker planted in him.”
Esper opened her mouth, aghast. “No, he can’t. Doctor Cliffton said Adam’s had been removed.”
“That scientist who helped you smuggle him out?”
Esper nodded. “Doctor Cliffton got his doctorate from Oxford in cellular genetics. I don’t think he’d miss something like that.”
Carl nodded. It was time to dig into the background of Doctor Cliffton. “Well, we’re going to get ourselves somewhere planetside and have Adam checked out. Nothing we’ve got on board is going to find a tracker if someone wanted it hidden.”
“Wouldn’t it be
safer heading straight for Mars?” Esper asked.
Carl pinched his chin between thumb and forefinger, feeling the scruff of not having shaved in days. “Depends how good a tracker it is.”
# # #
The descent into an unfamiliar atmosphere always put Carl a little on edge. Delos was the only habitable world in the system of the same name. The others got numbered and forgotten, but the fifth world from their sun was just Delos. It was a dry world on the Earth-like spectrum, with just a quarter of its surface covered in water. Most inhabitants of Earth didn’t care for the weather, so the population centers were all domed in. The starport looked like a produce market, with pea-pod hangar bays, each berth having its own retractable hemisphere that split to allow entry and egress. Yet another landing point that wanted to eat his ship. One day, Carl figured he ought to talk to a professional about that imagery, before he went nuts (or as Tanny would have told him, any more nuts).
While most people still considered Delos to be the frontier, it was clean and safe compared to Willamette Station. Companies had corporate offices in places like Delos; whereas, the only organizations who sought out Willamette were the ones who didn’t want the competition from legitimate businesses—or the oversight that went with it. One of the benefits of respectability was attracting doctors with valid medical licenses. You could get a hole patched up, or a parasite removed on just about any outpost. Delos had facilities that employed people who had done those sorts of things before, had gone to school to learn how, and had equipment designed just for that purpose. Carl still had a few scars from encounters with the other kind—sometimes you just had to take what you had available.
Their hangar was in the city of New Melbourne, one of the mid-sized settlements that dotted the sea of the southern hemisphere. While Delos catered to a mix of tourists and explorers, New Melbourne leaned toward the latter. Traders, cartographers, diplomats, smugglers, and pirates came and went from nearby xeno space; not many of the locals could tell them apart, and the smart ones just kept their heads down and counted the credits that flowed into their accounts.
As the crew filed down the loading ramp and into the hangar, Carl doled out assignments, such as they were. “Tanny, you go with Esper and Adam. Make sure they get to the med facility without any trouble.” Carl didn’t need to spell out the sorts of trouble she needed to look for. Tanny was better qualified to identify those than he was. “Mriy … just don’t kill anyone while we’re here. Mort, you can do whatever you feel like … not like I could stop you anyway. Roddy, you and me are taking another shot at getting rid of that escape pod.”
“Shit, Carl,” said Roddy, “First real port in almost a month, and I’m stuck haggling with scrap dealers again?”
“I don’t want them bullshitting me on tech details,” said Carl. “I’ll do the haggling.”
“Yeah, but—”
“We’ll find a good pub around here after. Drinks are on me,” said Carl. “That goes for everyone.”
New Melbourne Starport was bright and cheerful, with glossy white surfaces, colorful holovid displays showing departures and arrivals, and smiling personnel in teal uniforms. There were plenty of skylights looking up into the atmosphere as well, allowing bystanders to watch the ships taking off or landing. The glitz and polish were for the customers of the starliners; Carl and Roddy didn’t see anything but utility corridors and cargo haulers until the private and commercial wings of the starport merged at the central hub.
“Look at the rubes,” said Roddy, shaking his head. “All looking up, like they never saw a ship before.”
“Maybe some of them haven’t,” Carl said. Looking around, it was the usual mix. Over ninety percent human, about half the rest Roddy’s kind, and the other half a sprinkling of ARGO races. Nothing exotic. There wasn’t even the typical vibe of a swagger and ego that came with a spacers’ port. New Melbourne was tame, and Carl would have bet that there were people arriving by passenger liner that had never been outside the Terran system before.
As they walked the concourse, Roddy kept up a non-stop chatter. Sometimes he denigrated the false shine on everything in ARGO-secured space; other times he pointed out the people who weren’t what they were dressed to be. Carl had heard it all before and auto-piloted some supportive responses to keep Roddy from demanding too much of his attention. Carl wanted to look in the shops. As with anyone possessed of a Y chromosome, he hated shopping unless it involved a device that converted power into forward motion, explosions, or entertainment. But he was fascinated looking through the windows of shops as they passed by. Most of the clothing stores catered to women’s fashions and accessories. But there were also a number of shops hawking Delos-themed curios: shirts with images of the famous Angelic Falls, EV helms with the Delos “nine-planets, one Delos” logo and motto, and mugs boasting that the owner had flown the Zephyros Canyon Run. Other shops catered to basic necessities, perfunctory gifts, and personal entertainment.
Roddy’s voice grew quieter and distant, petering away to nothing but the general hum of a thousand conversations bouncing around the concourse. Carl had stopped. Amid the coffee shops, sushi bars, and chain barbecue restaurants was one establishment that enveloped him, sight, sound, and soul: Duster’s Dogfight Diner. They must have pumped something through the ventilation system, because amid the scents of grilled beef, fried chicken, and hot cakes, Carl smelled starfighter fuel rods. It was the largest restaurant they had seen on the concourse, and through the glass he could barely make out the giant holovid globe suspended above the patrons. Signs by the door didn’t allow anyone to pass by without knowing what went on inside.
INTENSE STARFIGHTER ACTION!
FOUR-ON-FOUR TOURNEYS NIGHTLY!
CHAMPIONS EAT FREE!
NOT A PILOT? PLACE YOUR BETS ON THE ACTION!
Carl blinked when he felt a tug at his coat hem. Slowly, he returned to New Melbourne, the concourse, and his impending trip to find a salvage dealer. “Come on, flyboy,” said Roddy. “If you wanna come back later, I’ll drink anywhere.”
“Yeah,” Carl said, staring over his shoulder as Roddy towed him away from the diner. “Yeah, we’ll come back later.”
# # #
Carl sat on a molded plastic bench, meant to look and feel like stone. No matter how hard the chemists tried though, they could never make plastic feel old the way stone did. Real stone had a comforting eternal feel to it; it made your troubles seem fleeting and petty and helped put things in perspective. Carl had sat on real stone before, back on Earth, so he knew. Parked on a plastic bench next to a genetically perfect potted ficus tree, he felt the full weight of being at the mercy of a laaku’s skill with the help kiosk. They had already tried every likely salvage yard within local tram distance and were back at the starport, looking to widen their search.
When Roddy returned, he was shaking his head. “I looked at other scrappers on Delos, and it’s the same song. They’ll melt it down for us for beer money. Starport’s offer’s as good as any. I say we just dump the thing and be done with it.”
Carl stood up, shaking his head. “Naw, we’ve put too much effort into this to cut and run now. We’ll hang onto it, maybe find a system running older transports and see if we can palm it off on them.”
“It’s really not worth the trouble, you know,” Roddy said, falling into step beside Carl as they headed back toward their hangar.
“Yeah, probably. Now it’s a matter of principle, though.”
“Principle doesn’t pay.”
Carl stuffed his hands into the pockets of his jacket. “I know, but principle’s what keeps you going when the galaxy seems hell-bent on siphoning every terra out of your wallet.”
“Come on,” said Roddy. “Let’s grab everyone and go out for that drink. That ought to cheer you up.” Whether Roddy intended him to or not, Carl heard the muttered afterthought. “It’ll sure cheer me up.”
# # #
The lighting was low enough that the holovid globe could be seen from any
where in the diner. Along two separate walls were banks of old flight simulator pods, four to a side. From those simulators, eight pilots controlled the action taking place above. Represented in the three-meter diameter globe was—according to displays built into the surface of each table—the Gespen Ship Graveyard, a man-made asteroid field of orbiting wrecks. Voice comm blared from overhead speakers, directionally oriented so that the knowledgeable observer could tell which team was talking.
Blue leader to Blue Two, you’ve picked up a tail.
Copy that Blue Leader, taking evasive.
“Noobs,” Carl muttered, glaring longingly up at the holovid globe. The whole crew of the Mobius sat together at a round booth, along with Esper and Adam. The boy’s scans had come back clear, and it looked like they had stopped at Delos for nothing but a bit of peace of mind.
“Shouldn’t we be in the wizards’ section?” Esper asked quietly. Anything below a shout was unlikely to be overheard. In addition to the comm chatter, bettors shouted encouragement to the teams they were backing, and a few beleaguered wait staff tried to run a restaurant.
“Young lady,” said Mort. “It is a layman’s misconception that wizards are inherently hazardous to scientific devices. It is the mark of a true wizard to refrain from magic at his will. I can—”
Tanny shushed him as the waiter with their drinks approached. He was dressed in a stylized Earth Navy cadet uniform, just obviously fake enough not to offend visiting naval personnel. Carl, Mort, Mriy, and Tanny had all ordered local Delos brews. Given limited options, Adam had requested a Cherry Hydro-Blaster. Esper went the safe route and ordered a caramel soda. For all his griping, Roddy just wanted Earth’s preferred from the tap, which tasted hardly any different from the cans they kept aboard the Mobius.
“Well, so it turns out Adam’s in fine health,” Esper said, starting the conversation anew in a different direction.
