“Food dispenser to your right,” Max said. “The passage takes you to your room, which includes a treadmill for exercise. These are your quarters.”
Carl divested himself of his suit, moving methodically. “I take it I’m not exactly a welcome guest.” In skintight undershirt and shorts, nothing about him suggested cyborg enhancements. He was merely a very fit man a couple of years older than Max and almost the same height. His was a leaner build, though. That made sense if his specialization was infiltration.
Max had the robust physique of a Star Marine honed to take and to deal out damage. But he had no illusions. Alone, he couldn’t stand against a cyborg.
“A deputy with his own spaceship would be useful.” Max deliberately gathered his few belongings, including his dirty coffee mug, which he took to the counter to be cleaned. The move put his back to Carl.
“Seems your last deputy didn’t have a spaceship.” Whether it was a true reflection of his nature or not, Carl flaunted an air of casual impudence. The blond scruff on his face and the hair left loose but long enough to be tied back added to the picture.
“One moment,” Max said. He checked his comms unit. Lon was handling the Anubis’s disengagement from the Lonesome, but that was information to be kept from Carl. It served Max better if Carl assumed Max had engaged autopilot. “Anubis, this is the Lonesome. Package received undamaged. We’re departing now. Safe travels.”
“Oh, we’ll be around a while. Farewell, for now.” The captain of the Anubis cut the transmission.
Smug devil.
A message from Lon flashed up on Max’s comms unit. “They planted two trackers on us on arrival and three as they departed. Lovely toys to play with if we wish to keep them occupied.”
Carl sat on the sofa, uninvited. “I’ve been told to make myself useful as your deputy. I don’t have a spaceship in my back pocket, but I was a mercenary on Tornado for two years. I can keep that cover and combine it with being a deputy. With a Space Rodeo causing chaos, even dubious types like Carl Jameston would be accepted as assistants by sheriffs to help keep the peace. Or I can ditch Jameston and be Carl Jafarov, Galactic Justice agent acquiring some field experience on the frontier. Your choice, boss.”
“You may choose whether to continue as Jameston or resume your own identity,” Max said. “My question was as to your briefing. What do you know of my background?”
Carl smirked. “Are you saying this is about you, not me?”
Max shoved his comms unit into a pocket.
His new deputy leaned back, stretching his arms over the back of the sofa. “Your reputation is for honesty and relentless efficiency. Also that you’re a loner, but you broke that habit by accepting your first deputy. Pretty girl. And now, you have me.”
Max recognized a deliberate attempt at provocation. He smiled. “Yes. Now I have you.”
Carl stiffened fractionally at Max’s odd response. Perhaps he picked up the threat and satisfaction in it. He tried to hide his reaction, though; meeting Max’s gaze insolently, the way a mercenary might. “You served with the Star Marines, with your parents’ support. Yes, I’m aware of who they are. My stunner, that your robot minions are recycling, is a Hwicce product.”
The name drop was deliberate.
Max nodded. He was the second son of President and Mrs. John Smith. As well as being the children of the most powerful man in the Federation, Max and his siblings were also heirs to the Hwicce fortune and, in his sister Cynny’s case, actively involved in shaping the Hwicce Corporation’s future. By any measure they were important and a target for kidnapping and other methods of extortion. Max’s life had been about escaping that cage ever since he was sixteen and had decided on joining the Star Marines.
“Take an hour to settle in.” Max strode for the internal hatch that exited the contained public lounge. “Then I’ll give you your first assignment as deputy.”
The hatch sealed.
“What’s his first assignment?” Lon asked.
“Speeding fine validation.”
It was the most tedious, time-consuming task Max could give the man.
In the event that a speeding fine was contested, an organic sentient had to review the original video evidence. The automated program had never issued a challengeable fine in the last decade in the Saloon Sector, but the law remained active. Whatever value it had originally possessed, the process of challenging a speeding fine had devolved into a means by which the citizens of the sector could truly irk their safeguarders. And given how busy Max had been, Carl had days of video to wade through.
Lon laughed. “You’re a mean boss.”
Max’s smile was grim. “I try.”
The mess deck was under a quarter full. Thelma and Naomi grabbed a serving each of hash’n’mash, a hot meal that was barely an improvement on the goop dispensed by a food processor. The coffee was good, though.
Thelma tucked her legs under a table toward the rear of the mess. Near them, occupying a table for eight, was another group of civilian space divers and tech support.
“…the President’s connection to Hwicce is what screwed us,” an overweight guy with a blond ponytail and bright blue utility suit pitched his complaint to be overheard. “We should be docked with the Neptune. Instead, we’re out here with the plebs.”
Thelma hastily stuffed a forkful of hash in her mouth. It was that or grin ridiculously. She was one of the plebs the scientist so disdained. But she was also in a relationship with one of Hwicce’s major shareholders. Max was the founder’s grandson. When John Smith, Max’s father, had married Esther Hwicce, they’d joined political and financial powerhouses into a juggernaut that took John Smith all the way to the Federation Presidency. Max’s family would never misuse their power for petty revenge, but the loud-mouthed scientist could be booted for offensive behavior endangering the Hwicce Corporation’s reputation. Cynny, Max’s sister, was big on Hwicce adhering to the highest of corporate standards.
Two other Star Marines were already at the table Naomi had chosen. They rolled their eyes at the Hwicce contingent’s posturing. “At least we’re not on escort duty any longer. They dismissed us.” The private who spoke tore his bread roll in half and mopped up the sauce left on his plate.
The naval carrier was serving as a spacedock for the dozen civilian teams assigned to it. Both their experimental designs, like Jerome’s courier class spaceship, and their base ships were locked to the carrier. The commodore had opened the mess on the fulcrum deck and an adjacent gym to the civilians. Everywhere else, they had to have an escort.
The other Star Marine private wasn’t as food-focused as his companion. Instead, he smiled winningly at Thelma. “Forget the eggheads. I’d happily escort you…anywhere.”
Naomi snorted. “Down, boy. You’re not as smooth as you think.” She glanced across the table at Thelma. “You still training with Max?”
“Yup.” And Harry. Thelma grinned.
Naomi pointed a thumb in the would-be lothario’s direction. “She’s out of your class.”
“Aw, Corporal.”
The other private finished his meal and his coffee, and wiped his mouth. “I saw you fight her,” he said to Thelma with a nod at Naomi.
“She wiped the floor with me. Busted my knee.”
Naomi smiled. “And look at you now. No limp and ready to kick ass.”
Belated recognition filtered through the lust-hazed brain of Thelma’s eager swain. His eagerness took a hit. He reared back in his chair, hands up. “I didn’t realize you were Sheriff Smith’s girl.”
The other private and Naomi eyed him in disbelief.
But Thelma didn’t take offense that a stranger thought it was Max, and not her, that they had to fear offending. She shook her head in mock sorrow. “The only thing faster than the speed of light is gossip in the Navy.”
When they all laughed, the table of Hwicce employees fell silent and stared at them.
“You’re with that urself, aren’t you?” A skinny Hwicce
guy raised his voice to address Thelma.
The three Star Marines’ relaxed manner vanished.
A couple of the Hwicce group noticed, but the skinny guy wasn’t one of them. He had yet to work out that whatever it was he thought made him important elsewhere in the Federation, on a Navy carrier in the Saloon Sector he was just a dude.
Four tables away, pragmatically seated nearer the food, five saurelles paused their conversation. The sixth saurelle sitting with them was a Star Marine corporal like Naomi. He’d been observing rather than talking.
Most of the saurelles Thelma met in the Saloon Sector were couriers. They loved to speed, so it was no surprise that any who could had found positions as dive riders in the Space Rodeo. Saurelles were reptilian humanoids around six feet tall. Navy rules demanded that they wore clothes while onboard the carrier. This was against their preference, so all, except the Star Marine, had left their shirts unbuttoned, exposing their scaled green chests.
The Navy weren’t the only people who liked to gossip. The saurelle couriers would broadcast around the Saloon Sector how Thelma handled the Hwicce idiots.
Fortunately for Thelma, her preferred approach for dealing with idiots matched the optimum strategy for strengthening her reputation on the frontier. “Jerome’s a smart guy,” she said neutrally.
“For a furry,” the Hwicce-employed bigot said.
The saurelle Star Marine corporal slapped his tail against the floor. The signal was for his tablemates. They sat back down. There were better methods of dealing with human superiorists than via violence.
“Everything said in the mess is recorded.” Thelma blew unnecessarily on her coffee; just to show that she was cool and in control. In actual fact, as someone who’d almost had her life derailed by other people’s prejudice, she dreamed of throwing the lukewarm beverage at the sneering scientist.
It was every bit as satisfying, however, to watch his expression change from superiority to hunted comprehension.
Thelma sipped her coffee. “I understand that Hwicce has a policy against species discrimination and harassment. The corporation staunchly supports President Smith’s Equal Opportunities stance. You can criticize Jerome’s work, although I doubt you’ll find many flaws.” Apart from that wretched artificial gravity system he jury-rigged in. “He’s a smart guy. Unlike some others I see around here.” She stared at the man whose colleagues were leaning away from him. “But use a derogatory term like ‘furry’ again and I’ll file a complaint against you with the commodore and with the Hwicce Corporate Standards Office.”
Her opponent slumped in his chair.
Thelma refocused on her tablemates.
The private who’d previously been scared off by mention of Max, smiled at her. “I love you.”
Thelma snorted coffee through her nose.
Chapter 2
The Ohana was a converted trampship. Not that Jerome had spent much money or effort on the conversions. His attention was myopically fixed on the projects in his workshop. It was his family who’d transformed the trampship into a home. The bulkheads were painted in cool, pale shades of blue and green. The furniture had unfussy, low lines. There were even tiny private cabins.
Thelma had adjusted to living among the dozen urselves with greater ease than she’d anticipated. Returning through the lock tunnel to the Ohana and entering the musky, menthol scented air of an urself habitation relaxed her muscles in a way that signaled that her subconscious considered the old trampship a safe place.
The urselves onboard were Jerome’s family in the sense that they’d grown up with him in the same orphanage. Most were traders in their ordinary lives. As an inventor, Jerome was an exception among his business-minded people. They were here because this was important to him, and because they’d provided the finance for his courier spaceship’s design and construction. Testing it in the Space Rodeo would be a proof that would immensely aid its commercial development and, ultimately, sales.
In testing terms, riding a comet helix was considered equivalent to traversing a perilous wormhole. A lot of prototypes were failing.
“Gladness. Tiredness. Longing.” The urselves sniffed the air as Thelma entered the common room. Eight were present, celebrating with pints of beer. Presumably the others were with Jerome going over the data from her ride in the Otua. Where Thelma’s human nose could only smell urself, the urselves themselves could smell her emotions.
“The dive went well.” She accepted a glass of water. As a rodeo pilot, the drugs allowed in her body were restricted to low levels of caffeine attributable to coffee or tea, and similarly low levels of mild pain suppressants. Alcohol was definitely forbidden. “Cheers.”
Glasses clinked.
After a few minutes of general discussion about the dive, Thelma asked if Jerome had any instructions for her.
She received sympathetic grins and shakes of the head.
Jerome was completely uninterested in the human occupant of his obsession. The Otua could pilot itself, and he expected it to. In his mind, Thelma existed to satisfy the Navy’s ridiculous requirement of an organic sentient body inside the Otua.
Every other spaceship development team would have demanded that their pilot return from a dive at the first possible moment, and then, subjected them to a vast array of tests and questions, following that up with a long list of instructions for the next dive.
Thelma smiled wryly. “I guess I’m lucky.” She finished her water and deposited the glass in the autoclean. “I think I’ll call Max.”
“Happiness. Love.”
The urself habit of calling out emotions took some getting used to. Thelma winked. “You forgot lust.”
Her companions snickered.
Jerome had asked her to pilot the Otua on the advice of his family. They, like other urselves in the Saloon Sector, respected her primarily for one genius idea. It was the kind of idea so obvious in hindsight, and so business savvy, that it won her huge credit among the urselves for spotting it.
The latest fashion in starliner safety was for the legally required lifepods to be multi-occupancy. The idea was that in the event of a deep space emergency, people would survive best in a group environment. That meant that as older starliners were refurbished, life rafts replaced lifepods. Thelma had seen an opportunity. On longer journeys, urself travelers entered into voluntary hibernation. What safer place to do so than in a lifepod repurposed as a secure, individual hibernation chamber? This made the urselves happy and freed up cabin space for other passengers.
Thelma’s reputation with the urselves of the Saloon Sector was made.
In the privacy of her tiny cabin on the Ohana, she contacted the Lonesome. It was strange to know that Lon was answering, and yet, be unable to acknowledge him. The comms transmission was encrypted, but it was a standard encryption; nothing that would raise eyebrows. Thelma had to assume that the Navy monitored everything within the boundary of the Space Rodeo, and that anything she said to Max, even in a supposedly secure transmission, would be at least passively analyzed.
The boundary of the Space Rodeo arena included a substantial safe zone around the comet helices. As a result, the Navy had temporary authority over an area that stretched from the Badstars halfway to Buran, the same distance upward, and down to two to three weeks’ fast travel from the famously remote refueling station, the Deadstar Diner.
Outside of that area, the Space Rodeo arena, Max remained in charge of his Interstellar Sheriff territory. It was a responsibility incredibly complicated by the rush of new visitors. The Navy patrolled the starlanes, but the daredevils racing to the Space Rodeo preferred to travel on unmarked routes. Add in troublemakers and opportunists and Max had to ride herd on chaos.
Yet, when Jerome’s offer came through for Thelma to participate in the Space Rodeo, Max had fully supported her joining in. “We’ll manage without you. Somehow.” He’d kissed her then, making clear what he’d most miss in her absence. “I envy you the opportunity. A Space Rodeo…if I wasn’t sh
eriff, I’d steal this chance from you.”
He’d been lying. Max wouldn’t take anything from her. He was all about the giving.
“Hi, Max.” Thelma curled up on her narrow bunk on the Ohana as the call connected.
“Hello, sweetheart.” As busy as he was, there’d been no delay in him responding to her comms. “I saw your dive.” The Navy was broadcasting Space Rodeo events, albeit with a delay. “How are you?”
“Good. And the medics here concur. I passed the debrief and I’m cleared for the next dive in two days. Naomi’s been escorting me around. I’m back on the Ohana now, in my cabin.”
“I’m still in my office.” A fractional delay. “My new deputy arrived.”
Thelma sat up. “Oh?” She’d still been on the Lonesome when Chief Kanu had issued the order that he had to have a deputy for the duration of the Space Rodeo, and not just a deputy, but one who’d lodge aboard the Lonesome.
Before Thelma had arrived in the Saloon Sector, Max had refused to be assigned any deputies. He and the others on the Lonesome had too many secrets to protect to allow outsiders in. She’d been the exception purely because Max had served with her brother Joe. As much as he valued his privacy, Max’s code of honor wouldn’t allow a fellow Star Marine’s baby sister to roam the frontier alone.
Not that Thelma would have been wandering aimlessly.
She’d been assigned to the Saloon Sector as a punishment and a message. She was a Rock Sector citizen who’d done the unthinkable and survived the elite Galactic Justice academy which was usually the exclusive province of core-worlders. Not only had she survived her four years there; she’d graduated top of her class. Exiling her to the Saloon Sector had been a message to all out-worlders that no matter what President Smith said about equal opportunities, out-worlders would not be allowed to usurp core-worlders’ privileges.
Thelma had been determined on revenge. Actually, she’d achieved it. The best revenge was to live well, and she was doing that.
“My new deputy is Carl Jameston, a former mercenary,” Max said.
Space Rodeo Page 2
