A King Word And a Gun

by Yuri Hamaganov

  While pumping fuel, the sergeant calls Uncle Joe—she needs instructions. The conversation is slow; the distance between her and the Bolshevik is more than a million kilometers, and she has to wait for an answer for almost eight seconds.

  “Follow it to Cocaine and wait for the Red Star.”

  “Got it.”

  Refueling is over, and now she can go further, but Olga isn’t in a hurry to leave. She needs to settle one more thing. She doesn’t like the idea of hijacking a mail rocket: computers have a long memory, and this act of piracy might someday come to the surface at the most inopportune moment. It’s necessary to formalize the hijacking as something official, for example, as a rescue operation, but for this, it’s necessary to find someone to rescue.

  So, she'll arrange a roll call: Belladonna-Five isn’t the smallest station; maybe she'll find the right person. So, here they are: some civil servants, one from the Chamber of Commerce, with a rank higher than hers. Suitable. Their ship is broken along with the berths, so the civilians won’t mind getting to Union territory on another transport. Now she’s definitely not a pirate. Now Sergeant Voronov is carrying out a rescue operation, evacuating personnel, and for this noble work, she temporarily requisitions the ship. Having made a call and waiting for people from Belladonna-Five, the girl steals a pair of expensive iridium incisors and several other valuable spare parts from the broken boat, since the opportunity presented itself.

  “Get into the hold!”

  Closing the hatch, Olga beats the message to the fleet headquarters.

  “I am performing a rescue flight; going to Cocaine TMA-17.”

  Once upon a time, about sixty years earlier, this small station actually produced cocaine and other drugs that were supplied to the expanding colonies during the first wave of expansion. This continued until virtual stimulation everywhere supplanted chemical preparations, after which the station was sold to new owners in view of the successful location. Since then, it has passed from hand to hand several times and has been rebuilt many times. The old name is still on the list, and no one uses the official registry, calling the station Cocaine and nothing else.

  “Follow pier M5!”

  “Got it,” Olga replies, waking up from a pleasant slumber, and with a slight push of the engine, changes the course of the mail rocket. Cocaine is only half private; the other half belongs to the Union shipping company, and so she’ll wait for the shuttle on her territory.

  Having skirted private parking lots, where there are almost no empty spaces, the mail rocket makes its way to the right pier by a narrow corridor in the minefield. The artillery satellites hanging in the vacuum escort her with the eyes of pulsed lasers. Olga isn’t surprised; in these times, every little object with any value must take care of its own security, providing, if necessary, a hot welcome to any uninvited guest.

  “What wind brought you to our land?” Olga is asked by a thin nervous woman in the crumpled uniform of a civilian fleet in lieu of a greeting: a senior officer at the nearest dispatch center eight thousand kilometers away from Cocaine. Judging by her appearance, she hasn’t slept since the birth of Grond, possibly even earlier.

  “I had to give urgent help to several of our fellow citizens, and this warehouse was the closest. Where should I hand over my passengers?”

  “The last thing I need here is a rescue operation. My dear, there are no places for passengers, so send them to a free cargo compartment. Let them sit inside until a car from our farm arrives. You don’t need to call a taxi, as I understand it?”

  “The shuttle from my ship will pick me up.”

  “Good. If you stay there for a while, I'll send you as an assistant to the local commandant; he needs an engineer. That's an order.”

  Olga isn’t happy that some civilian is giving her orders, but subordination still exists. The woman who hasn’t slept many months is higher in rank.

  “Roger.”

  “I like smart girls. His post is on the other side of Cocaine; you have to go through the private sector. I can’t guarantee your safety, although I’m sure that a Bolshevik can stand up for herself. When you meet the commandant, though, don’t be surprised by his behavior; he sometimes behaves strangely. But he knows his business perfectly. You can rely on Louis. Good luck.”

  “Thank you.”

  Having sent the civilians to an empty hold and strictly warning them not to leave before the arrival of the shuttle, Olga goes to the depth of the station, passes the lock chamber, and enters the residential zone.

  The fact that this is part of the private sector becomes clear without any warning signals, immediately after the first, careful sip of the local air. The air is disgusting—stuffy, stagnant, and smelly, with a high content of carbon dioxide and other impurities. As on almost any private station these days, the number of people actually on Cocaine is much higher than the estimated number, and investors are in no hurry to invest super profits in the modernization of the life support system. Olga isn’t surprised by this fact; in recent months, she has visited many private settlements, everywhere watching a similar picture and breathing the same disgusting air. If you turn off the option of perceiving odors, then you can live. You must sacrifice something for the opportunity to briefly remove your helmet.

  She can’t turn off the lack of living space, unfortunately, and Olga moves through the crowd, defiantly raising an aspen swarm overhead and holding a disposable cartridge of force field in case anything goes wrong. Three common compartments separate her from the privileged zone, and she must go through all of them.

  The appearance of a guest as rare as a naval officer doesn’t go unnoticed. Dozens of people are scurrying around speaking dozens of languages around her, suggesting something to buy, sell, or exchange or doing some other commercial operation. Dirty kids ask for money or refueling of an oxygen balloon, annoying adults demand the immediate arrangement of a rescue operation to take them away from here, and the girl continues to go forward, regretting that she isn’t accompanied by a Marine with an electric whip in his steel hands. Without honoring any of the questioners with a single glance, she overcomes three overcrowded deck sections, one after another.

  There are people everywhere, at whatever station she comes to, as if the girl is roaming from one gypsy camp to another. How many ships have unloaded here all these passengers who paid a lot of money just for the opportunity to get out of Earth without a known final destination? Having sold everything and bought a place on a transport, they fly to any private station that opens its borders, where they wait for the opportunity to move on, cherishing the hope of getting to the Moon or Mars.

  Tickets, oxygen, water, provisions, energy—all this costs more and more every day, and many of these immigrants are stuck in stations like Cocaine, unable to continue the journey and not knowing how they will pay the customs fee the next day. She found that it was the same almost everywhere she went in the past two or three months. And just like everywhere else, here, in Cocaine, she sees the emblems of the Red Dawn painted on the walls and ceilings; apparently, the local authorities have already realized the meaninglessness of cleaning it off—they will still draw new ones: a red pentagonal star, in the center of which AK-47 assault rifles are crossed. She repeatedly sees this symbol.

  Here, at last, is a red line, reliably separating the privileged zone from the common compartments; anyone who crosses the border without permission will gets a heavy electric shock. Here, air conditioners work better and there is much more free space; here, locals don’t disturb travelers with useless requests. There are people here as well, but far less people and their moods are completely different. Rich migrants from Earth, wandering merchants, mercenaries, free engineers, bandits—in recent times bred everywhere like cockroaches—and God knows who else. They meet her with cold, estimating glances; of course they’ve heard about the Bolshevik.

  Creedence Clearwater Revival plays as a pair of black skeleton-like robot guards escort the girl with unblinking eyes. The barker at
the brothel extols his institution, the casino lights gleam, and life bubbles in the exchange market. Olga compares the current price and exchange rates floating in the air, buys a vanilla milkshake, with a smile twirls in her fingers a local tourist souvenir—a bag of white branded cocaine—and goes on until her look attracts the stall of a mustached Indian seller surrounded by steel kegs. He has few buyers, which isn’t surprising—his goods are expensive.

  “Elena, come in.”

  Having switched to a specially protected frequency, Olga calls the ship's doctor, attentively examining the interested keg.

  “Chernova here.”

  “Good evening, Elena Sergeevna. Pay attention to this number; perhaps this is what you were looking for.”

  Olga brings a keg to her eyes, giving Elena the opportunity to carefully consider the markings. She knows that Chernova has been looking for this purchase for a long time, giving orders to all the Bolsheviks temporarily leaving the cruiser. Perhaps this time they are lucky.

  “Look at it carefully; I'll show you how to check this thing. You need to make sure it's not fake.”

  Given the time spent on the certificate and receiving confirmation, the inspection takes almost half an hour, during which Chernova, through Olga, asks the seller dozens of obscure questions, inspect documents, and takes several samples.

  “So . . .”

  “I'll take it. Buy it with cash; I'll pay you back later.”

  Olga gives the seller a thick package of Stalin's rubles; he packs the keg in the transport container. Based on Chernova’s hints, the keg holds a miniature coffee plantation, which will soon begin to supply the Bolshevik crew with the best Brazilian coffee. The girl doesn’t quite understand how Elena will manage to do this; in her view the keg only contains a black soil of some sort, several seeds, and a colony of beneficial bacteria, but in any case, it’s Chernova's concern. Her task is to carry out a trade operation.

  “It's always a pleasure to work with a real connoisseur; thank you very much for your purchase,” the Indian man says in Russian, gazing steadily at Olga's gray eyes and turning to Chernova in this way.

  “Thank you,” the ship’s doctor thanks him. The purchase is made, and Olga picks up the portable coffee plantation and leaves the market, heading further to the closed doors, behind which the Union sector begins.

  Another red line is at the closed armored door, surrounded on both sides by machine guns. A small red light is burning above the door. Without taking another step to the barrier, she stops, shows a pass, and calls out a one-time individual code. The red light is replaced by a green one, and Olga steps over the barrier and enters through the open door, which closes immediately behind her.

  “Welcome to Cocaine.”

  “Hello.”

  High cowboy boots, short denim shorts, a leather jacket carelessly thrown over her shoulders, which doesn’t hide the strong breasts with small nipples, the black Stetson hat on the back of her head: a Love Industries sexoid, a model of 2088-90. Olga has seen them in many colonies but has never communicated with one before. Usually they make them with the faces and figures of famous porn stars, but this face isn’t familiar to her. Apparently, she was made for a special order.

  “The boss is waiting for you.”

  ***

  Johnny Cash finishes his song, and for a second, it's quiet. The self-made jukebox changes the vinyl, and the needle goes down: King Crimson, In the wake of Poseidon. With a click, the cap of the old-fashioned gasoline lighter reclines, and Louis fires a new joint, the second in an hour. Marijuana smoke rises, bending around a lazily rotating fan. Smoke has long been saturating absolutely everything in the habitable compartment. Olga feels the persistent smack of the cannabis with every sigh, with every piece of biscuit, and with every sip of hot black tea from the large copper teapot.

  “Section B3, the check is complete. The modernization has been carried out.”

  “Cool.”

  His name is Louis, just Louis. He calls himself an Australian, but he visited his homeland only once, then flew to Earth as a tourist.

  The commandant of Cocaine was born somewhere in the colonies about forty years earlier, and since then, he has traveled a lot in near and far orbits and, judging by the tattoos, with some mercenaries or as part of a pirate crew. At the same time, Louis isn’t a pilot or an engineer; he is a logistics specialist, which eventually allowed him to take the post of Commandant of Cocaine, which he has been managing for the past three years. Olga suspects that Louis works here not just in response to the call of the heart but in hiding from his former colleagues and friends. She doesn’t question him about it, though; that would be impolite.

  Louis manages alone; there are no other employees in the huge sector, which is in contrast to the crowded private compartments—Olga and the passengers from Belladonna-Five are the first guests in the last eighteen months. Transport ships come and go, the private sector is more and more filled with refugees, and he steers all this, unabashedly lighting one joint after another.

  “Wanna puff? It helps to relax from the far space road,” the host cordially extends the joint to his rare guest.

  “No, thanks for the offer, but simple stimulants and drugs don’t do anything for me; in addition, I don’t smoke. Maybe you have tea?”

  “And buns. Jennifer, organize.”

  “Roger, boss.”

  The absence of other people doesn’t mean that the commandant spends all time in proud solitude. There is someone keeping him company: Jennifer, the already familiar Love Industries sexoid, with total multifunctionality. And if the stubborn smell of marijuana doesn’t irritate Olga, the beautiful tanned breasts of Jennifer, which she isn’t going to cover with her short jacket, cause a certain dissonance. But it’s their station, not hers. And Jennifer's tea really is perfect, just like the buns.

  Having a bite, Olga begins the work she came here for—she needs to make minor repairs to the on-board power system. A second workplace in the inhabited compartment isn’t provided, so Louis places her in his own self-manufactured operator's chair. Everything here has been done by his hand; her temporary companion takes a creative approach to the problem of free time and lack of resources. Like many other professional colonists, Louis is a jack of all trades, able to do everything, including building a quality operator's chair. The girl sets up the chair in front of some posters with Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris—she had the same ones in the High House, many years ago.

  Time goes by. A detachment of rat-repairmen finishes the journey through internal tunnels and gradually gets out onto the surface, patching the cable network. The Red Star slowly approaches; Olga will leave Cocaine in nine hours. Another transport with refugees arrives, lands three hundred, takes on board just forty, mainly from the privileged zone, loads the cargo, and leaves. Twenty minutes later, a large truck docks, and the girl watches as Louis starts unloading, placing the containers in the holds according to an algorithm known only to him.

  On Earth, Grond is close to Tel Aviv, and the organized evacuation has ceased. Jennifer, going somewhere, comes back with a large bag of plastic debris. The plastic is sent to the recycling machine. Olga periodically glances at her, trying to guess what exactly the sexoid will do with the raw materials. It soon becomes clear. Jennifer casts hot viscous plastic in thin disk-like shapes, quickly cooling them. That must be where Louis gets his extensive collection of vinyl records; he is a big fan of warm tube sound, having assigned his girlfriend to his favorite business.

  The repair squad gets to a large hole in the hull. Olga specifies the dimensions; she needs to put a big patch here. A lightweight unmanned transport arrives, the passengers from Belladonna-Five leave, and Olga and Louis remain alone. Grond ends up at Tel Aviv and drops its speed to a minimum, as if thinking about where to go next, eventually deciding to move to the southeast. Another truck pulls into Cocaine, and Louis quickly carries out the loading. Then come the time for physical exercise. In the left corner, a worn boxing pear is rocked,
on which the commandant brings down a series of quick strikes from a minimal distance. Olga appreciates his Wing Chun; the constant use of marijuana doesn’t affect the coordination of the commandant's movement; he obviously uses some chemical neutralizers.

  Jennifer finishes with the plates and includes an antique printing press—she makes stickers and cardboard envelopes: today, Louis’s recording company is making an edition of Everly Brothers. Judging by the number of records, some of them will be used for exchanges—among the residents of neighboring stations, a lively barter turnover is common.

  The homemade bread maker announces the availability of the product with the short clang of a bell, Louis takes buns and the compartment is filled with cinnamon and vanilla. There is clearly more than they need.

  “Look at the shop; I'll go for a walk.”

  Louis goes to the private sector; he is immediately surrounded by a crowd of children, who noticed the commandant from a distance. Olga watches with some surprise as he hands out the still-hot buns, trying to make sure there is enough for everyone.

  “Does he often do that?” she asks Jennifer, who is weaving a rug in a hippie style.

  “The boss feeds refugees every day; they’re starving.”

  After returning, Louis goes to check his small farm and takes a new crop of cannabis. Olga swallows a stimulant pill for dinner. With the task completed, she has only to wait for her transport.

  “What is it?!”

  Olga's attention is attracted by the panic in the refugee compartments, spreading everywhere, like a gust of wind. A minute ago, everything was normal—another crowded station, nothing more—but now, something has changed. Almost everyone is standing up, and as the human wave starts moving to the boundaries of the red zone and the lock chambers, Olga hears the blows being transmitted over the bulkheads.