Yesterday's Spacemage

by Timothy Ellis

  I looked Jenna in the eye, and winked at her. She frowned, but I followed up with a grin.

  "What?"

  I drew on some ship power. A computer, desk and all, and a set of storage devices, appeared in an empty corner of the room.

  "Tell me you didn’t steal their computer system?"

  "Hell no. I copied it. At least it should be a copy. Only one way to find out, and that’s look at the data."

  She did just that. It took her a while to find the access she needed, but once she did, ship movement data filled the screen.

  "Too much data!"

  "You prefer not enough?"

  She shot me one of her menacing looks, but I just grinned at her. The data changed as she started sorting through it. At last she looked happy.

  "Do you have anything else to do here?"

  "Not me. I can go for another walk if you need me too."

  My last several walks had been very lucrative. Lifting bank cards had proved to be really easy, and there was no alarm if one left the proximity of a synced pad. Back on the ship, my pad had displayed a list of what was on all of them. There were going to be some really unhappy people on this station soon.

  "No, you better stay here. The last few pallets are not selling, so I'm going to leave them with a broker I know. Be prepared to leave in about an hour."

  She walked out in a hurry.

  Back in my own space, I transferred most of what was in my account to my empty card, and marked it so I’d know which one it was. In the future I was going to need to be consistent with what I transferred onto each station to use, and it had to match the transactions on my account reasonably closely. I might have become a thief, but only a stupid thief puts more in their authority accessible account than it should legitimately have in it.

  I'd made quite a few legitimate thumbed transactions just for practice, and to buy a few things. I'd invested in enough clothing to keep me going for the immediate future, eaten at some expensive restaurants in my new flash clothes, just for the thrill of it, and traded in my pad on a new top of the line one. The store copied everything from old to new without question, and showed me the old one was wiped clean. Mostly I bought things, which someone just escaped from slavers might do to get back to normal. It also meant I now had legitimately bought things, which no-one could accuse me of stealing.

  Once some sales of our cargo started happening, Jenna had done the same. It turned out not all of her things had been recovered. She'd also bought a new pad, and done the bank thing as well, in order to get it synced, and get a new bank card. I didn’t know what else she'd bought, but I’d seen her returning once, quite well laden down.

  Once shopping had stopped being a buzz, I'd gone wandering. The book shop drew me straight in. I found a huge area of book shelves, covered in hard books, all sorted by what sort of content they had. I’d picked one off at random, and found two prices. One was for the hard version, and the other for the electronic version. I replaced the book, and went looking for a shop person.

  It turned out the reading interface for the pad was free. It came with a sample, which I found didn’t read very well. The girl handed me a larger tablet with one hand, and thumb print reader with the other. Before thumbing, I tried the free book on the tablet, and found it to be a much better read. I double checked the one she'd handed me was the top of the range, and she merely smiled at me, and offered the thumb device again. I thumbed it.

  I'd spent several hours in there, reading the first few pages of all sorts of books, and ended up with several dozen to get me started. Several of them were promising enough for me to get the sequels straight away. Before I left, I was informed the tablet would access their stores wherever I went, and I should be able to buy new books almost anywhere. The tablet would automatically find book stores, even if they were not the same chain, and I could browse from the ship as soon as I had a station connection, which I learned was often well out into the system, if the ship was coming in on a standard traffic lane. I thanked her for the information and help, and started reading the first book while I had a nice dessert at a café nearby, before returning to the ship.

  Banking over, I continued reading, until my pad beeped at me. Another payment had gone into my account, presumably my share of the cargo sales. I transferred it to my primary card, leaving the same amount as I had before in the account.

  Jenna didn’t even bother checking if I was actually aboard, before the ship undocked, and headed out into space. I made a note to make sure if she said don’t go off the ship, I didn’t. I had no illusions she would wait for me, if she wanted to be somewhere else.

  I had no idea where we were going.

  Twenty

  "So explain the dynamics of running a ship to me."

  "Seriously?"

  "Sure. Why wouldn’t I be?"

  "Why do you want to know?"

  "I assumed ships had to move cargo in order to be able to pay crew and consumables. I know there were docking fees. I assumed you had to refuel as well."

  "Docking fees cover the removal of waste, topping up of water, and if needed, replenishing air supplies. Plus rent of the dock area, and the costs of moving freight in and out. In the overall scheme of things, docking fees are petty cash."

  She looked at me for a moment.

  "Which reminds me, before we dock next, we need to merge the waste systems, so your waste doesn’t eventually fill up the system. It's something I forgot to tell you to do. The air and water need merging as well. I'll dig the specs out for you."

  More work. At least it gave me something to do. She went on.

  "The ship isn’t refueled. The power plants don’t need fuel, and are rated for fifty years. The ship is a little over ten, so power isn’t a worry in the short term. Long term, I need to make sure the cost of replacing them is covered. To that end, I keep a separate ship account, which gets a percentage of what I make each trip, and is something I can only dip into in an emergency. The cargo you picked up, saved this from being an emergency. And most of it sold well, so I'm back in business, and not owing anything."

  "You own the ship?"

  "Yes. I inherited it from my parents a few years ago. Buying it was one of the last major things they did. It was supposed to be their freedom from planet life. Now it's mine."

  She didn’t venture what had happened to them, and I didn’t ask.

  "There are three main costs to running a trader ship of this size, but only two apply to me. The major one for most independents, is the loan repayments for financing the ship. Next is crew salaries and bonuses, with food and incidentals for comfortable living, and lastly the price of cargo if you buy it yourself. Normally I don’t take the risk. Most stations have shippers and brokers needing cargo moved just about everywhere, so you get paid the shipping rate depending on where to, and how far it is away. Often there are bonuses for getting there ahead of schedule, and some fast ships clean up on these. With the extra speed we now have, I'll have a better chance of claiming some of them."

  "Did you get a cargo this time?"

  "No. I didn’t want to get tied to anywhere, in case we get where we're going, and need to leave immediately again. I can cover docking fees for a while if I have to, since your salvage paid better than hauling a standard cargo. For now, there's no crew expenses, and there's enough food for both of us for a few months."

  "What's the likelihood of more salvage?"

  "I don’t know. If we have to defend ourselves again, maybe pretty good."

  "What if I empty the cargo bay before I destroy the ship?"

  She looked at me. It was a long hard look.

  "Are you turning pirate yourself?"

  "Not that I was aware of. But if we need to destroy a pirate, or anyone else attacking us, why settle for just what doesn’t get destroyed with the ship?"

  She shook her head, and unexpectedly nodded.

  "If you decide to become a pirate, tell me so I can set you loose somewhere. I will not be involved in pir
acy. Over the top privateering on the other hand, I can live with. In fact, if this becomes a regular thing, I might register with the privateer's guild, and legitimize us. Maybe the bounty hunter's guild as well, which would allow us to attack anyone with a bounty showing, and be legitimate about it. A lot of salvage operators work that way too, taking bounties, being very careful about how they make a kill, and salvaging what's left. It's high risk, but pays well. Let's see what happens. I would prefer not to get into any shooting situations again. We have a finite number of missiles, and those things are expensive to replace. I know you hit hard, but I can't rely on you completely. And if we don’t expend some missiles, people are going to ask awkward questions."

  "Maybe we need some guns on the ship as well. Something which doesn’t need ordnance replacement?"

  She grunted.

  "Now you’re talking extra power plants just to run guns. And a crew member to operate them, or intelligent turrets. More expense."

  "But it would provide easy answers to how we survive all the time."

  "True. I'll think about it. It's not something I want to do."

  "What you want, and reality, might not have much to do with each other."

  "Ain't that the truth. I'll roll with the punches, but I make no promises. First thing is to find my engineer. After that, my cargo officer. Then we look for your home planet. Everything else is a distraction. If we can salvage useful stuff to keep us alive, we’ll do it."

  "What if we can't find my home?"

  "You better learn to like it out here in the deep dark."

  Twenty One

  I jumped myself into an empty room on the ship Jenna said her crewmate was on. I’d made sure it was empty before jumping, and immediately wrapped invisibility around me once I was there.

  This was much more fun than getting sewage lines to meet up, cleaning out all the cargo bays magically, or even reading books. On the way in, I’d spent a lot of time choosing and downloading more reading material, but it was something which kept me occupied, rather than enthused. I wasn’t at all sure I wanted to like it out here in the deep dark. The stars and whatnot were losing their appeal, the longer I stared out at them.

  The ship Jenna was looking for was easy enough to find. It was docked where she expected it to be, and publically listed. As soon as we picked up the system coms, we knew we were in the right place, and we kept checking regularly to make sure the ship didn’t leave before we arrived. After docking, I'd done the tourist walk around the station, but only as cover for getting a look at the docking area, which proved to have private security, and no way in, even if invisible. It was a productive walk for me all the same. Jenna supplied me with a plan of the ship in question, which revealed it to be a luxury cruise ship for one of the bigger corporations.

  It raised several unasked questions. Why would a corporate ship be buying slaves? And why would they be stupid enough to send such a known ship into pirate space? Which in itself led to other questions. But Jenna wasn’t talking, so I wasn’t asking.

  I’d selected this room not only for being empty, but for having an open door. I went through it quickly, the layout of the ship on my pad held in front of me. I passed a few crewmembers, but it was obvious they couldn’t see me. It wasn’t the best place to start hunting for a single person, but getting in and out unnoticed was the aim.

  I also had an image of the girl I was looking for. It was of her and Jenna, faces together, and smiling for the image taker. Pretty face, but next to Jenna's, very ordinary looking.

  The further I went into the ship, the more people there were. They were mostly crew, but some were obvious passengers. It was easy to tell. The crew were polite and deferential. The others were obnoxious, self-important, and totally up themselves. And suddenly I could see this ship going to a slave auction. Having determined the type of people in charge, I carefully removed any bank cards they had, and felt better for doing so.

  The slaves themselves, and there were a lot of them it seemed, all wore see through clothes. Men and women. They all wore the same collar, but it was different from the basic one Jenna had worn. I took the time to investigate several of them. The main difference appeared to be levels of pain infliction.

  This became apparent when I looked into what I thought was the most likely room to find my target. Jenna was guessing, but one of the larger crew areas was the most likely she thought to be a slave dorm. Now I was wondering about the guess, since it proved to be spot on.

  The girl was lying on the floor, writhing in agony, while a man in a suit stood over her, holding a remote. She was naked. He was the image of a corporate high flyer, who enjoyed giving pain. I'd seen enough of them on the teevee over the last two years to recognize the type. And the smile on his face gave away his love of inflicting pain.

  The collar was the only thing keeping this girl from killing him. Not really a girl, the same as Jenna wasn’t a girl, she had the body of a female weightlifter, and without the collar, she looked like she could take any man apart without even trying. Her body still had a feminine look, but it was quite obvious she could bench press me without raising a sweat. And yet, she was the one naked on the floor, obviously in agony.

  This was slavery, in its naked state. And seeing her like this made me so angry, I almost killed him right there and then.

  But I didn’t. In and out unseen was the go.

  First I had to stop this. I peeked inside the remote control, found a simple switch, and removed a tiny bit of it. The writhing stopped immediately.

  "Fuck it!"

  He was genuinely upset. I added a tiny whiff of smoke, to give the impression the remote had fried itself. He shook it, nose wrinkling, and forced it into a pocket.

  "Get up," he snarled.

  With a great deal of effort, she managed to rise, and stood there swaying slightly.

  He hit her.

  It wasn’t a gentle tap, which was all he needed to knock her down again. She went down like a brick, and stayed there.

  I stood there with my jaw hanging open. Closing it made a slight sound as my teeth came together, and I had to stop myself from grinding. His face I was committing to memory. Next time we met, he'd wish we hadn't.

  But what to do. He made no move to leave the room, which was otherwise empty of people, although there were sleeping mats for a dozen. He just stood there, looking down at her, a sneer on his face. She was out for the count, and he was happy with himself.

  He deserved as much pain as she'd given her. More. But I couldn’t do anything which would reveal someone else was there. And suddenly, I had an idea. I reached out with my sight, looking for something special, found it nearby, and moved just a small amount into his stomach area.

  The effect was immediate, and he clenched his middle with both hands, jaws now clenched, sweat showing at his temples, and he shot out the door so fast, he hit the side of it as he went. There was no sound, even though the collision should have hurt. His footsteps vanished rapidly.

  I knelt down next to the girl, and felt for a pulse. It was strong, but she was definitely out cold. I drew the invisibility around her as well, and vanished her collar. I placed both hands on her shoulders, reached out for this ship's power plants, pulled strongly making the lights dim, and moved us back to where Jenna was waiting.

  "What the fuck happened?"

  Twenty Two

  "Some motherfucker king hit her when I disabled the remote he was torturing her with."

  "Is he still alive?"

  "Yes, but I moved some industrial acid into his guts, so he isn’t going to be feeling well for a while."

  "Will it kill him?"

  "Maybe, but probably not."

  "Help me get her up."

  Between the two of us, we pulled her up onto her feet, and one each side, dragged her to the small medical bay. Jenna pushed some buttons, and the medical unit slid open, swiveled, and tilted. We leaned the unconscious girl back first into it, Jenna pressed another button, and it tilted back to
horizontal, swiveled back to its original position, and closed up.

  "Leave!"

  I left. Jenna's distress was obvious, and there was nothing I could do further.

  Well there was, but not on this ship.

  I went back. This time I jumped into the engineering spaces. I’d spent enough time connecting sewage pipes to be able to recognize them. I concentrated, using the power of the ship, causing raw sewage to bulk up. I added pressure to it, and kept applying it until the pipes ruptured all the way to the dock.

  I jumped back, before any of it came near me.

  "I'm going for a walk!" I shouted towards Jenna, but didn’t wait for a response.

  Out on the main concourse, I casually walked around until I came to an obvious disaster area. There were gawkers everywhere, and I joined them. The ship was being evacuated, and as I watched, a medical team came rushing out with a wheelie bed, on which was someone who was groaning loudly. I tried really hard to keep a grin off my face.

  People streamed out of the ship, and I looked at each one, trying to identify the slaves. Slavery was illegal in this system, I'd checked, but what you did on your own ship was your own business. At least until you left your ship.

  The last group out, with six security guards around them, were definitely the slaves. Their collars had been removed, they'd hastily donned more appropriate clothing, but there was no fight left in them. And there was nothing I could do, without giving myself away.

  What looked like a ship's officer and the senior civilian, were arguing loudly with someone in a station uniform. I moved so I could listen in, and it turned out the station person was laying the law down about substandard maintenance, and what was going to happen to fix it. And more importantly, how much it was likely to cost. The suit was red faced and swearing every other word, while the officer was calmly determining what was needed to be done.