Ships of Valor 1: Persona Non Grata

by Aaron Kennedy

  I selected a few items from the wardrobe, based on what we had seen a selection of traders wearing in Luna on various security feeds, and my own scouting runs after my training at Tycho. From what I could tell, most pilots leaned towards comfort and utility. I slid my new jacket on to complete the ensemble and gave myself a once over in the mirror.

  My old synth-leather boots were staying with me because they were strong, comfortable, and broken in. Why reinvent the wheel? I had on a good set of tan utility trousers, I had managed to give a somewhat worn look over the last couple of weeks. A simple belt and a light shirt peeked out from under my jacket. Most importantly my jacket also kept my holster out of view and preventing awkward questions about that piece of insurance. The gun wasn’t strictly illegal, but any security who saw it on me might raise a few eyebrows and I was aiming for non-descript. We had added a patch to the front. CKG Limited with a corporate logo, a pair of rockets to signify my status as a pilot.

  We had decided against putting my old call sign or real name. CKG Limited was the name of a previously non-existent company we put together as an import and export firm to disguise our plan. Rather than smuggling in contraband, we were going to smuggle in the ship and myself, and use the cargo as the Trojan horse.

  “Captain on the bridge” Heart announced to no one in particular. Despite my many protests, I couldn't get him to give that up, and I think the protocol may have been hard-coded into his programming, or his idea of a joke. I was debating it as I hopped into my chair. My chair. Such an odd thought. “Ari, we still have a little while before we arrive. Were there any final preparations you wanted to make?” I couldn't think of anything we hadn't covered a dozen times before, so shook my head.

  I brought up the most recent newsfeed from the local satellites and did a quick refresher on local events. The one thing we have never been able to figure out is how to push radio waves through space faster than light. Plays hell with trying to watch anything off-planet.

  I'd only ever been to Ganymede once before. It's a nice place in the nice parts and seedy in the not so nice parts. Unlike Mars, which was a semi-independent government, Ganymede was a joint venture. There was a government, but the corps ran it. Ganymede was a brand more than anything else. It was an attitude. A place to escape and the corporations religiously protected that ideal. They used the government as a tool to enforce, hiding anything even remotely unpleasant under the surface.

  This made Ganymede an ideal tourist resort. Beautiful in every way, but still requiring logistics, administration, and operation. These are far from pretty or clean. The bureaucracy behind them can foster corruption, especially when appearance and profit become the primary concerns. Like a gorgeous pristine apple once cut is rotten to the core.

  That metaphorical apple appeared on Heart's main viewport, and he switched control to me, after coordinating for landing at Anson Station. Anson was the largest and primary port handling anything not related to strictly to passengers. Since we were pretending to be a cargo ship we headed in that direction, rather than towards Port Moore, which handled all the tourists. I was glad Heart had run me through dozens of sims on atmospheric entries because I nearly botched my attempt even with the extra training. Once we made the transition things settled down a lot, but flying in a vacuum is a lot different than flying through air. Whatever skills I thought I had, quickly disappeared. I almost had Heart take control, but instead told him to watch my back in case I did anything stupid or was leaning towards unrecoverable.

  After what seemed entirely too long, with Heart pretending to be me on the comm-link so I could focus entirely on landing him, we secured a place on a mid-sized pad. Since we hadn't actually arranged for the sale of our merchandise, we hadn't lined up a hanger or any kind of storage. We figured we would be here for a week tops, so used our imaginary company to pay for the pad. Comms were actually simple, since the new dampers I had picked on Luna could link directly with Ganymede, and Heart could tap into their communications system.

  Shortly after he had swapped into standby, I strode down the gangplank, not sure what to expect. I ended up meeting a customs officer with a bored look on his face, so I tried to counter his apathy as best I could with a smile and played stupid. Told him it was my first solo run and saw if he wouldn't educate me a bit.

  One of the best parts of bureaucracies, especially known corrupt ones is nepotism. Everyone has a cousin or a brother-in-law. By playing dumb, and leveraging his self-interest, getting him to help himself, he could end up helping us at the same time. While I was doing this, Heart was using my damper's earpiece, and one of its lenses to give me a little more information on our new friend. Nothing distracting, but enough to allow me to nudge and tweak the conversation in the right direction. Not much later, he had us processed with minimum graft and pointed towards the sector where he planned to rob us blind for our cargo.

  Chapter 11

  I hopped onto the nearest tram and followed the directions my new customs buddy had given. I normally shut down when traveling, but Heart was tapped into my dampers and this was a completely new experience for him. Since he could see through the lens display, and hear through the mic, he was rattling off questions as fast as he could compose them. Luckily, my tramcar was empty so I was able to answer freely, and swivel to look at everything Heart wanted to see.

  “Ari, can we get you higher resolution aud-vid equipment?” I wasn’t tracking, so I asked him to explain. “Our communication equipment is adequate” a distinct note of disdain, “but it could be better. I researched some commercially available alternatives of a similar style to the ones you currently wear, which are far more robust.”

  It hit me. To me, my dampers were merely a pair of glasses to adjust the incoming light and sound to the correct level, with minor communication capability. To him, the glasses were a lifeline to the outside world. His normal connections were through satellites, security cameras, or whatever other feed he could find. On Luna, those were extremely limited and locked down. He was unintentionally blinded. While I traveled, my wearing even an inexpensive set was giving him an expanded view he didn’t have access to before.

  I had him tell me where the best nondescript pair could be found, and detoured immediately to purchase a couple. I also told him we would figure out how to expand his visibility at our earliest change. “Thank you, Ari!” I told him not to worry about it, but to let me know if there was anything else I was missing. I wasn't able to process as much or as fast as him, and I was bound to miss things.

  After grabbing and syncing up the new dampers at one of the fancier casino gift shops, I grabbed a quick bite to eat while Heart played with the settings. My initial thoughts of them being only for him were completely wrong. Previously, I always leaned towards the inexpensive sets, because I tended to break them. Wear and tear was intense.

  But a gig's worth of new tech added a lot of features I hadn't even considered. The new set was better than the heads up in my combat kit. On top of that, the dampers added a 270-degree visual sweep, and its audio pickup was clean enough to monitor my heartbeat. I didn't understand half of what the box said, but Heart seemed very excited, and as he shifted through various features like news channels, low light, and UV, I started to understand why.

  The other items he had me pick up were the best comm unit the store had and a compact signal repeater. The dampers interfaced with those, but the real power would actually be in the microcomputer housed in the comm unit.

  After feeding my stomach and his excitement on our new toys, we headed deeper into the city itself. Our destination was on the opposite side, in what was essentially the low rent district. The city was set up in rings sitting on top of each other. The upper city handled all of the tourists and people who could afford to live on Ganymede permanently, and the lower city laid underneath was very similar to Luna's setup. The vicinity of the ports and the casinos created their own economies regarding property values, developing a fun-house mirror effect. Swapping from
above to below the values shifted dramatically because labor for each area was reversed.

  The Spacelanes Lodge was my goal was mid-sized inn setup with full room and refreshers. Although Heart was a big ship and fully equipped most of the ships we saw were sparse and only designed for moon-to-moon jumps. From what we could gather, the place was a bit of a local hangout, but not an exclusive bar. I didn't need to be a Mariner or a Legionnaire to go in. I'm sure the bar had its regulars, but I shouldn't draw too much attention being an unknown either.

  When I arrived, my first impression boiled down to thinking the place was a dive. A completely unfair assessment. Anything in Sol looked like a dive compared to White Caps, after I had recently spent several lunar months in her. Spacelanes wasn't even a fraction the size of White Caps. Probably fit in the public section, even. The more I thought about it, the more I realized the place is probably what White Caps looked like long ago. The main entrance opened into a diner, but I could see a breakfast counter with the kitchen behind off to one side and a full bar on the other.

  I slid to the kitchen side and grabbed a stool. “Be right with you, Hon.” a server shouted as she hurried past. The place wasn't overly busy, but enough to keep the couple of servers hopping. I guessed around thirty folks total, and not all human. The presence of non-terrestrials was actually fairly surprising. Most of the other species require slightly higher O2 levels, so Terraformed places weren't exactly comfortable for them. Much like being on Terra wasn't exactly pleasant for Looneys. As I scanned the area, Heart did the same, but he was creating a map and giving me hard data about everything in the club. I have to admit, the feed was slick, and I not only wondered where he was all my life but how I was ever going to live without him in the future.

  Nikki, according to the nametag slid up “What it'll be, Hon?” I told her coffee for the moment but asked her about Corrupt Cousin Teddy from the port. “You must be new, darling. Stay away from him.” She dropped her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “You're better off hitting the job boards. That’s the kind of guy who will end up getting you in the wrong crowd.” I confided I was indeed new, and asked her if there was anyone a little more trustworthy. She told me she'd think about it and grabbed my drink.

  Heart chimed in “She seems nice. Do you think she can help us?” I nodded and hoped he could pick up the motion. We would need to figure out a way to talk in public. His ability to talk to me was great, but I lacked the same ability. Long ago I had heard an adage, if you see an issue, imagine yourself a month in the future dealing with it as a problem instead.

  This had happened to me long ago when I was still a trooper. I had spotted a bad connector on a hopper. No big deal. We marked it and put it on order. The thing is after walking by it three times, it becomes that bad connector. We knew it was there and stopped worrying about it. A half year later the connector was still bad, and we go to attach our kit and we couldn’t. Because there's a bad connector we'd known about forever. There's no excuse for that. We couldn't simply say we had ordered it because the follow-up is, when had we checked on it last, and we hadn't.

  I plugged a quick text message into my comm unit and asked for Heart to come up with some ideas. The last thing I wanted was not being able to talk to him when I needed to. “I am already working on some options. However, I can monitor your biometrics, which should suffice until we come up with a permanent solution.” We were discussing possible ways to use this when Nikki came back to refill my cup and slide me a comm chip. I gave her a quick nod of thanks as I drained my cup before she topped me off.

  On her next stop, I asked about rooms, and she pointed me to the kiosk in the hall. It was automated and actually let me rent by in almost any increment I wanted, from hour to month. I assumed that was in case someone wanted a quick shower or had an extended leave. I credited a couple of days and headed on up.

  The parallels between here and White Caps were becoming more obvious. Like the hotels were cut from the same cloth, but just were tailored into different items as the years went on. The room I had been assigned was an almost exact match to the one I stayed in right before I shipped to basic. It was uncanny. More than likely the plans were simple and universal, and I could find the layout anywhere in the galaxy if I looked hard enough. I hadn't been in many hotels, so the novelty was amusing so I spent several minutes playing with drawers and buttons while talking to Heart about it.

  I finally quit my yammering and got back to business. I pulled out the comm chip and accessed it. There were a few names, which Heart quickly accessed and displayed on the room's screen rather than my dampers. “They look like local vendors. I do not see any major criminal activity though it is hard to tell with the official databases.” I told him I was less worried about that, and more about establishing our cover. The idea of the job boards caught my attention, though.

  “Mine as well. The boards appear to be a bulletin of sorts. Similar to the listings where I purchase parts for my projects. One can place listings of services for a price. I have narrowed the choices down to transport, excluding passengers and come up with several viable options.” A new list appeared on the screen. I asked what was worth our time monetarily. “Based on our cover, we would need to be at least one-third full for fuel consumption. Although I use fusion reactors, my vehicle registration class is a fuel burning type. That removes this portion of the list.” Almost half the list disappeared. “Further, our stated experience makes us ineligible for this section. Though we may be able to negotiate pricing.” Another section in red. “This leaves several unclassified entries, likely smuggling operations. I know we are not specifically opposed to them, but I am unsure what challenges those jobs may present.” A section in yellow.

  The board had three entries in green, eight yellows, and six reds. I told Heart nice work, and to focus on selling what we already had. We'd break the list into parts. Some we'd sell to our customs buddy. We'd never know when we'd need a helping hand. The rest we'd split between the list Nikki gave us. As for the rest of the list, we'd start setting up meetings and see if we couldn't swing a job.

  Chapter 12

  We knew finding the correct job wasn't going to be easy. The job board was actually a bit of a godsend in some ways, however. Although none of the first lists panned out, they did net us a solid batch of contacts, and we ended up getting a couple of quick trial runs from Ganymede to some of Jupiter's other moons. Nothing spectacular but enough to justify being in that area of the system by helping us build a little bit of credibility in the circuit while we tried to find the haul to take us to Terra.

  Since Heart was a mid-sized ship, we weren’t in actual competition with the locals allowing us to establish a niche market. We could do things the smaller guys couldn't due to space while they could do things we couldn't far cheaper. It was very favoresque. We would get tips about someone needing a shipment moved, and if we could cover it at a good price, we would. If outside our wheelhouse, we'd point the job to someone else. The reverse was also true. We'd gotten at least a dozen calls over the last month from different referrals.

  Heart was having a blast. Although we kept his nature private, he was publicly my partner and co-pilot. Something he found great amusement in. Being the copilot that is. I can't say I blamed him. His social group was expanding rapidly since he handled the communications system; he also started to cover our flight schedule. I think he liked the responsibility or he was bored to the point where he convinced himself he did.

  After our initial dock fees expired, he went ahead and leased us a small platform of our own, and what was nominally an office. In reality, a garage with a barely working runabout and a functioning comm feed. Absolutely perfect. We plastered our logo on both. The concentric rings representative of our solar system combined with the CKG lettering. We had debated putting the logo on Heart himself and discarded the idea very quickly. Neither one of us wanted to mar his gorgeous hide.

  I was in the process of restocking Heart's freezers when we got an
actual lead. He had an extensive larder and an even better greenhouse, but even the best kitchen has gaps. I wasn't trying to complain, but there are some things I would start to crave when I couldn’t have them. Stupid things like lemons. I had gone five years without any lemons, but after having three of Schmiddy’s half-and-halves I was craving them constantly. Being on Ganymede gave me the perfect opportunity to expand our stores. It's not like we had a lack of storage space. “Ari, I think we have something. When you have the chance, can you make your way to the bridge?” I told him I would be up as soon as I finished the crate I was on.

  I ducked out of the reefer and made my way up to the command deck. Heart announced me as soon as I walked in, and I shook my head. I asked what he had. “I think this may be the one we have been waiting for. It's a request for us to transfer a fairly large shipment of crystallic drone chips. There is a need for a ship with magnetic sealing capability.” I asked what the catch was. He was talking about high-end gear, and despite our recent successes, we were still rookies. “We need to pick the shipment up soon, and it needs to be delivered within three weeks. It will, however, give us a solid visa to enter Terra controlled space.” I told him to sign us up and get us prepped for the takeoff. I then stopped, and asked what he meant by a pickup. “The shipment is on Titan. I believe we have barely enough time to make it there. I would suggest buckling in. I need to turn the gravity down, or you will probably become extremely nauseous as we leave.” I had perhaps three seconds of Ganymede's gravity before we went null, and I felt the decel dampers kick to full. I grabbed my chair, quickly pulled on my harness, and watched the front viewport accelerating at what I guessed was close to unregulated speeds.