by J. S. Morin
Two-Shot Pete raised his glass, half filled with twelve-year-old scotch and two ice cubes. “To Carl, the most henpecked, love-struck son-of-a-bitch between here and Andromeda. I’d put myself in front of a blaster bolt for Tania Rucker, and I wouldn’t blame Carl one iota if he was the one who fired it.”
“Here, here,” a chorus echoed around the table. Glasses, bottles, and tankards clinked and clanged. Carl chuckled. There were times when he wondered…
# # #
The shush of the door sliding open brought Esper awake with a start. The unfamiliar surroundings confused her for just a moment before she remembered her circumstances. Security Chief Indira stood in the doorway. “Good morning. I trust you slept well.”
Esper pulled up her blanket, feeling underdressed in the nightgown the Poet pirates had provided. Her cell—if it could remotely be called that—was nicer than her quarters on the Mobius. In fact, it was nicer than her room back home on Mars, because whoever had decorated it had refined taste. It wasn’t the frilly, garish explosion of self-expression from a girl whose parents had decided to give her whatever she wanted. The floor was wood-inlaid, warmed from beneath and polished to a shine. Her bed was four-posted with heavy velvet curtains on all sides. Books lined shelves on one wall; windows that looked out over the planet below took up most of another.
“Um, yes,” Esper replied. “Fine, thank you.” The mattress had been a pillow for her whole body, so soft she had felt weightless.
“Dinner to your liking?”
“Delicious,” Esper confirmed. They had given her a menu, and she had picked everything chocolate that the kitchen had. It had been a day that warranted something sweet.
“And Raimi?”
Esper flushed. She had been preparing for bed when Raimi had arrived. He wasn’t tall, but had arrived bare chested and glistening, with a smile that shone like pearl to offer his services. There had been a fair amount of beating around the bush before they settled on a massage being among her options. She had been skeptical at first, putting herself in the hands of a half-naked man, but Raimi’s fingers had worked any lingering tension from her muscles, like a magic all his own. It had taken a fair bit of praying to keep her from suggesting any more than that.
“He was nice,” Esper said, and cleared her throat. “So … what now?”
“Your clothing is being laundered and will be returned to you,” Indira said. “However, you will have a wardrobe provided by this afternoon, at the admiral’s direction. There is a bathrobe in the washroom if you feel a chill in the meantime. Breakfast will arrive shortly. You may amuse yourself however you like. The holovid is omni-connected and has an extensive in-core library of classical works. Most of the books are written in English. So long as you handle them with care, you may read any you like.”
“And … that’s it?”
“That’s it. You are our guest for the time being.”
“Not that I’m complaining, but why treat me like I’m staying in a New York Prime hotel?”
Indira’s face grew stern. “Admiral Chisholm believes that Mordecai The Brown has more than a passing interest in your well-being. The cost of pampering you is insignificant compared to the risk of angering that one.” The security chief’s lip curled in a slight smile and Esper caught a twinkle of mischief in her eyes. “And besides, you have a soul filled with grace and a form pleasing to the eye. You fit in well here. I think I may enjoy looking after you.”
Esper was not sure she had stopped flushing from before, but felt the blood rushing in her ears. She was beset by hedonists.
# # #
The planning room for what was being called the Operation RIBBIT looked like an executive board room that had been vandalized. It had the signature long, glossy black table, but it was covered in take-out containers and the chairs were a hodgepodge of different styles. All around the walls, there were posters for the Lewiston Black Barons, ad sprawls for popular holovids from the past few years, and a flatvid that flashed sports scores and betting lines from major events around the galaxy. Below the flatvid was the motto: “It’s always game time on some world.”
Carl sucked in the whole atmosphere in the few seconds it took for the door guards to let him and Tanny through. Mort was already seated inside, looking grumpier than usual, along with the rest of Janice’s crew. “Good, you two are the last. Rudi, clamp down the door so we can get started.” The door guard complied, and the conference room was sealed with an ominous thud.
“First things first,” Carl said. “How’d our boy do?” The effort of trying to sound chipper fell flat. He was buzzing on too little sleep, a hangover, and three cups of coffee. He tried to tell himself he was wide awake and feeling fine, but for once he wasn’t buying his own bullshit.
“You should be a squeaky-clean, upstanding citizen in a couple days,” Janice replied. She had exchanged the slinky attire of the previous night for a black button-down blouse and slacks. One could have easily mistaken her for a legitimate businesswoman. “My guy, Marty, circled him like a vulture the whole time and gave him the all clear. If Bryce has the connections he claims, it’s down to the waiting.”
“How’s he ride?” Tanny asked in a voice like lead. Unlike Carl, she was looking much better this morning, though he had noticed a look in her eye that disquieted him. When they met in the hall a moment earlier, she had looked right through him. He usually earned himself a glare or a frown or even a quick averting of the eyes to pretend she hadn’t seen him.
“Excuse me?” Veronica spoke up. “That’s no way to talk to Janice.”
“This is business,” Tanny said. “I want to know if we’re bringing Bryce along because we can use him or because he can light you up. I saw you weighing him with those eyes of yours.”
“You’re out of—” Veronica began, but Janice cut her off with a raised hand.
“No, it’s a legit question,” Janice said, staring down Tanny like a gunfighter before a shootout. “I gave him a shot, but hey, he’s a family man.” She flicked a hand through her loose hair. “Says he kept them out of his official record, but he’s got a wife and two kids. A new bed warmer might have been nice, but a family man’s always a more reliable business associate.”
The words hung in the air as Tanny and Janice glared at one another.
“So,” Carl said. “I hear the holo-projector in here’s top of the line.”
“Yeah,” Mikey Whistles said. He fished in his pocket for a remote and turned it on. The unit was mounted to the ceiling directly above the conference table, and the field hung in the air at the center of attention. “Boom! How’s that for resolution? Smooth as ice.”
A small fleet of ships appeared in the air, hanging in formation. The two-dimensional text markers all appeared to be facing Carl, though he knew through some techno-trickery it was making it look that way for everyone. The fleet was labeled: “Roy, Barnum & Toyoda Mining Expedition.” The R, B, and T were highlighted, and below, the words Operation RIBBIT, with the R, first B, and T in matching blue.
“Here’s our job,” Janice said, pointing to the fleet as she began to walk around the table. Carl slid into a seat before she had to go out of her way to walk around him. Tanny did likewise, scowling at Janice instead of watching the holo. On the table, one of the boxes still had some cold spicy chicken wings, and Carl helped himself to one. “This is the Roy, Barnum & Toyoda law firm’s side business. One of those stuffed-suit Earthers got it into his head that the Platt System is ripe for an unregistered mining colony. Low profile. No paperwork. Real hush-hush. I only got the system name out of them when I said I couldn’t bid unless I knew where I was going.”
“So we’re working with the mining lawyers?” Tanny asked.
Janice snorted, clearly amused with the appellation. “Something like that. They hired me—that is, us—to provide security in ARGO’s absence. We get them there, hang around a couple days while they get settled and cozy planetside, then we get paid two hundred grand.”
&
nbsp; “What are they mining?” Mort asked. It was unusual for Mort to take an interest in operational details. It must have been the secrecy that gnawed at him.
Mikey spoke up. “Ssssssure don’t know,” he said, letting the long, sibilant ‘s’ whistle. “Them boys is tight on that lock. They won’t say. They people won’t say. All’s we know is it’s gonna be a mint.”
“So, they’re just mining… somethingorother?” Carl said, waving his hands in little circles as if he was searching for the word.
“Don’t matter none to us,” Mikey said, grinning.
“I take it we’re not going to Platt?” Tanny asked.
“No siree, Miss Tania,” Mikey replied. He gestured to Carl with a beckoning finger, and Carl passed the cold wings.
“The mining fleet has three armed vessels,” Janice said. She poked her finger into the holo-field and ships glowed at her touch. “Delta-grade military surplus. All obsolete. All retrofits. Just guns welded onto the outside of heavy freighters, really. It’s mostly a deterrent. Once we get out of secure space, we’re their protection.” Janice gave a smug grin that she shared around the table. There were nods and chuckles, but Carl knew a humoring-the-bosslady chuckle when he heard one.
“So where do we come in?” Carl asked. “Looks like your crew’s got this covered.”
“You brought me Bryce,” Janice said. “He gets to clean up the registry on those vessels so I can resell them half legit. He flies with you; he’s your responsibility. Since this is his first job, he gets a half share, and you and your crew can split the other half as a referral.” She looked to Tanny. “Don’t let anyone say I never done anything for you.”
Carl furtively did a count around the table, trying to parse out how Janice would be splitting up the spoils with her own gang and estimating what one share was worth. That was when he remembered that it wasn’t two-hundred grand that was going to split, but the profits from the stolen ships. At that point, he gave up.
The meeting delved into boring details on the ships, their crew complements, their defenses and weaknesses. Carl’s eyes glazed over, and the dim light let him nod off through much of it. He knew his part. He owned a ship that was going to babysit a data-wrangler. Tanny would be flying it, and Mriy could handle the turret if it came to that.
Carl woke from his not-so-covert nap with Mort’s hand on his shoulder. “Come on, Van Winkle, time to head back. There’s something we need to talk about before Bryce finishes up here.”
# # #
Tanny’s mind was flat during the ride back to the Mobius. They had a ship to get back into shape, supplies to stow, and gear to purchase before they departed. Her thoughts were on none of that. Carl blathered away to Bill, who piloted the hover-cruiser for them, a conversation filled with his usual inanity. She paid it no heed. Mort stewed beside her, hunched in his sweatshirt and grim as she’d ever seen him. That warranted a passing inkling, but she had more pressing concerns: Janice was dragging them into piracy, and she was struggling to be bothered by that.
Tanny knew she didn’t want to cross that line, taking her money over other peoples corpses out in the Black Ocean; it had been a hard rule she and Carl had agreed on when first putting together a crew for the Mobius. But she hadn’t been about to get her hands on any Sepromax from her on-world contact. The little weasel, Branson, she had scrounged up as a supplier carried marine pharmaceuticals for buyers like her, but Sepromax wasn’t standard issue; in fact, it ran counter to one of the marines’ primary uses of Recitol. She knew she didn’t want to murder a bunch of innocent spacers in order to steal their little mining fleet, but she couldn’t actually care about it.
It was a frightening thing, realizing the control a drug can have over you, even as it tightens its grip. She wasn’t afraid of getting caught. Odds seemed good they’d get away with the crime. She wasn’t scared for her safety. It was as easy a job as they’d had in months. A lazy part of her brain said it wasn’t worth arguing over and that she might as well get paid for once. It was only that memory of her resolve not to fall prey to the amorality side effect (if it truly wasn’t intended by the chemists, which she questioned) of Recitol that kept her from caving.
The plan needed to be simple. It needed to be lazy. If she got frustrated or overwhelmed, Janice’s Operation RIBBIT might just seem like the path of least resistance. Get back to the ship. Supplies. Repairs. Sneak off world when no one was looking and trust Mort to keep them below astral sensors. There would be hell to pay for it someday, but it was a price Tanny was willing to pay, she was pretty sure. It was hard to tell, when she couldn’t give a spent fuel rod about the fate of those mining colonists.
The hover-cruiser arrived at the Mobius, leaving Bill to take a local shuttle back to the resort. She might have muttered a goodbye before he left, but a minute later she couldn’t recall.
“Come on,” Mort snarled through gritted teeth. It was odd for the wizard to be the first back aboard ship. Hurrying was one of a laundry list of activities that were beneath a wizard’s dignity, according to him.
“How’s the repair job going?” a chipper Carl asked Roddy as the laaku closed the loading ramp behind them.
“Good as you can expect, given our budget,” Roddy replied with notably less enthusiasm. “Mort catch you up on what’s gone on while you were in Ruckerland?”
“No,” Mort snapped. “I didn’t. I got a grand total of the walk up that blasted ramp without some drooling Rucker lackey dangling his ears in my way. These ninnies even let one fly us back here; Mr. Hangover and Mrs. Chemical Imbalance were in no shape to operate a hovery-wagon.”
“Something I need to know about?” Carl asked.
“We can’t do it,” Tanny blurted. She shook her head both to clear it and for emphasis. “We’re not pirates.”
“Wait. What now?” Roddy asked.
“Yes, we are,” Mort replied. “That’s what I needed to tell you.”
“You guys turned pirate since yesterday?” Carl asked. The look of bewilderment on his face would have amused her if she were capable of it at the moment. Instead, all she felt was a rising irritation. Unfortunately, anger, annoyance, and impatience were all quite intact despite the Recitol.
“As if Esper would have gone along with that,” Tanny said.
“Actually, Esper’s with the pirates,” Roddy said.
Carl held up his hands for attention. “There’s no way …”
“Of course not,” Mort said. “Esper’s with the pirates. She isn’t one of them.”
“Why is she with the pirates?” Tanny asked. No one was making enough sense for her liking, and she wasn’t certain that her off-kilter brain chemistry was the least bit to blame.
“There was an incident,” Roddy said. “Esper and Mriy were out picking up supplies. Some dipweed local starts trouble, Esper kills him, Mriy gets beaten bloody, and the pirates took Esper.”
Carl made a switcheroo motion with the index finger of either hand. “I think you flipped that around. Mriy killed someone, and Esper got roughed up.”
“Nope,” Roddy replied, crossing his arms and looking smug. The laaku was clearly enjoying this.
“Enough!” Tanny shouted. “Someone start making sense. I’m going to break a neck every time someone starts a story in the middle and leaves out the essential details. Starting with yours.” She leveled a finger in Roddy’s direction.
Roddy cleared his throat and backed in the direction of a toolbox. As if that would save him. “Mort. You tell ‘em.”
Mort described the events that had led to their being arrest and Esper’s subsequent transfer to custody on the Poet Fleet’s flagship. The killing being a magical accident and Mriy being subdued by a dozen armed sheriff’s deputies added the necessary plausibility to quell Tanny’s rising anger. The involvement of the Poet Fleet crystallized into focus: local politics. You just couldn’t let folks inhabit star systems in numbers greater than a dozen or so without them fracturing off into factions and creating politics.
Tanny turned to Carl. “So it’s the room that’s cursed. It’s not just tech specialists on the Mobius. It was always both until now.”
“We’re not leaving her,” Mort said. Tanny had expected the first reaction to be Carl’s, and had already prepared herself for an argument against him.
“I mean,” Tanny replied. “How long have we really known—”
“Tania Louise Ramsey,” Mort shouted. “Whatever gremlins are clogging your brain, you should be ashamed of yourself.”
“Easy, Mort,” Carl said, patting the air. “Tanny’s not herself today. Cut her some slack. No, we’re not leaving Esper.”
“But we said ‘no piracy,’” Tanny said softly. They weren’t listening. She was trying to keep it together. Right and wrong were fuzzy enough just then without Mort and Carl changing the rules. “Years ago. We … we won’t be like my father. We’ve got standards.”
Carl took a long, steady example breath, and Tanny followed suit. “It’s going to be OK,” he said. “We’re going to get Esper back. We’re going to get paid. Yes, maybe there might be something resembling piracy involved, but you heard your cousin … that fleet belongs to lawyers.”
“Well, shit,” Roddy said. “Lawyers? Practically doesn’t even count as piracy, does it? I mean, who’re bigger crooks than lawyers?”
Tanny suspected they were having one over on her—there was too much grinning. But she couldn’t put a finger on the hole in their logic. They were stealing from lawyers, whose job mainly consisted of using the law to screw with people. They would use law breaking to screw with them right back. Stealing their ships and killing the crews would serve them right.
“All right,” Tanny agreed. She aimed her threatening finger at each of them in turn. “But you’re not fooling me. This is piracy. But we’re only going to do it a little.”
