by Phil Rossi
The thrust of Gerald’s ship increased gently, pressing him into the control couch, and Crescent increased in size at an exponential rate. Before long, it was all Gerald could see out of the forward port. Weathered hull raced by at a blinding speed—so fast that he couldn’t make out any details. It was all a multi-colored blur. The ship shuddered as it slowed.
Melodic laughter chimed from the oblong speaker mounted above the control couch.
“Something funny?” Gerald asked and looked around the empty bridge for a spilled cup of coffee, or maybe a stow-away space monkey come out of hiding.
“Yes. Would you like me to elaborate, Captain?” A metered baritone drifted from above his head—the voice of the ship’s computer.
“Yes, Bean.” Gerald could not put together why the previous owner of the tug class hauler had named the ship Bean, and Bean refused to elaborate.
“Thank you, Captain. I find it humorous that this is your fourth visit to Crescent in the past six months.”
“That tickles your circuits?” Gerald arched a brow.
“It does, Captain. You yourself said you’d never be caught dead on Crescent.”
“When did I ever say that to you?”
“You never said it to me directly, but you have said it on numerous ship-to-ship communications,” Bean commented.
“You always were one for eavesdropping, Bean.”
“It can’t be helped. It is my ears that you speak into ever so tenderly.”
Gerald grunted and glanced over at the main scanner overlay. A shimmering holographic projection floated to the right of the control couch. It showed a green schematic of the station and its relation to Bean’s tight orbit. A handful of colorful radar blips circled the image in three dimensions. The proximity indicator flashed the decreasing distance between Bean and the docking hub.
“Bean. Open the comm channel to Crescent ATC.” Gerald paused. “On second thought, send the landing request for me, will you? I’m feeling antisocial.”
“When are you ever feeling social?” the computer asked.
There were a few seconds of silence before Bean spoke up again.
“Permission has been granted, Captain.”
A portal of brilliant light loomed ahead, making it impossible to see much of anything else. Bean glided toward the opening in a graceful pirouette. Silvery tethers uncoiled from dark compartments on the station-hub. There was a shudder as docking clamps on each tether’s end engaged. Bean was pulled into Crescent’s main hangar. And like that, the salvage hauler—proclaimed “Bean” in faded, stenciled letters—was no longer moving.
Gerald dropped from the small disembarkation porthole on the underside of Bean’s hull. It felt strange to be on a solid deck. Stillness for the first time in three days. The crawl is gonna get me, Gerald thought. The second my head hits that pillow. The deep space equivalent to sea legs, the crawl was a persistent sensation of motion most pronounced after long trips between stars. Maritime folklore said a seafarer’s soul didn’t always reach the shore at the same time as his body; the sailor still felt the waves because his spirit remained at sea. When mankind sailed to the stars, the folklore traveled with him, nearly unchanged for thousands of years.
Gerald wondered if Bean felt anything similar to the crawl. Doubtful. Bean was, after all, only a ship.
A woman stood waiting on the hangar deck; her arms were crossed over the dark blue of her Crescent Security uniform. The blues, as they were called, were the standard Core Sec threads. Hers were embroidered with an arc of gold just above the Core Sec starburst insignia on the breast pocket to indicate her as a member of Crescent Station’s crew. The officer had dark hair, woven into a tight braid that fell down her back in a coil tighter than the docking lines that had pulled Bean in, leaving her pale face framed by a few stray ringlets. Her lips were set in a straight line. She was pretty—very pretty—and looked just as fierce. She had a mean-looking stun rod slung in a hip holster. Typical welcoming party. Gerald set his yellow duffle on the flight deck.
“Back so soon, Mr. Evans?” she asked.
“Officer Griffin.” He smiled. “Did you come to say hello or to break my stones?”
“Just checking for the usual, Gerry. Weapons?”
“Just the widow makers.” He balled his hands into fists and raised them.
She snorted a laugh and shook her head. He bowed with grace.
“It’s hard to believe you’re even real, Mr. Evans,” Griffin stated.
“Thank you very much. The 11:30 show is different than the 7:30,” he said, and bowed again. Although he joked, Gerald was no idiot. The weapons policy on any space station was strictly enforced. On Crescent it was a matter of life or death. A projectile traveling at near sonic could easily puncture Crescent’s old hull if it hit at the right weak spot. The station had a hard enough time maintaining pressure and atmosphere without having holes punched in her skin. Gerald raised his arms. “Commence the pleasuring, Officer Griffin.”
She smirked and waved a slender black wand up one side of his body, along his arm, and repeated the gesture on the other side.
As Officer Griffin scanned him, Gerald glanced down the length of the hangar deck. Black-clad members of some religious cult swarmed a merchant. No sooner had the fat bastard set foot off his ship than black leaflets were shoved into his face. Every station has its crazies—especially this far out, Gerald thought. At least they’re not playing tambourines. Even still, Gerald would be sure to avoid them all the same.
“Mayor Kendall would like to see you.”
“What’d you say?” He returned his attention the officer.
“Mayor Kendall would like to see you,” she repeated.
“Now?” He looked to his duffle bag as she probed it with her magic contraband detection stick. “I’ve been dying for a shower and a shave these past few days. And I need to stow my sack of underpants and socks.” He gave the yellow duffle a shake.
Officer Griffin looked up at him with green eyes and batted her long lashes.
“Take it with ya, pard,” she said in a mock-drawl and then shrugged. “Like with most personal appointments from the Mayor’s office, it seemed important.”
Swell, he thought. Getting summoned by Crescent’s Mayor, the de facto iron fist of the deep space outpost, smacked of getting called to the principal’s office—nothing good ever came of it.
(•••)
Gerald rejoined Officer Griffin on the other side of the decontamination causeway. Sound, light, and people exploded from everywhere he looked. His head spun. The second he stepped out of the DC he wanted to turn right around and head back to his ship. Main Street, Crescent Station blew the mind like a Euro-Chin firecracker after any length of time in the sensory isolation of space. The wide and vaulted station level was the nexus of station life. The chamber, roughly one square mile of metal, glass, and support pylons, was a mismatch of colorful tent-shops, bazaars, taverns, and people—lots and lots of people.
Light the color of salmon drifted from large sun globes suspended high above. Gerald had arrived just before the night cycle of the station. Activity on Main Street was ramping up and Gerald couldn’t seem to keep pace with Griffin as she wove through the crowd. They passed Heathen’s, Gerald’s favorite of the Crescent watering holes. Music and raucous laughter drifted through the brushed-chrome batwing doors, mingled with the fine stench of tobacco. A drink and a smoke was exactly what Gerald wanted. Officer Griffin turned to look over her shoulder, frowned, and grabbed him by the arm.
“Did you forget how to walk?” she asked.
“What? No.”
He was thankful when they dodged out of the crowd and into a service tunnel. Homeless people slept in the shadows, their limp bodies propped up against the walls. Thick cables ran above their heads like black serpents. Conduits hissed overhead. Officer Griffin had slowed her pace. Was this some kind of short cut? Gerald was pretty confident they were headed away from the station’s administrative suites. Office
r Griffin halted beside a wide door labeled Storage 15. Her fingers danced over the keypad set in the wall beside the door. There was a chime and the door shuddered open. She gestured with a cock of her head. Gerald arched a brow.
“The Mayor is in… there?”
“Just go, asshole.” She gave him a small shove and followed in behind him. The door slid shut in their wake.
It was dark as pitch in the small room. The air was thick and musty.
“Are we… ” Gerald began.
“Alone?” The word almost sounded like a laugh as it passed over Griffin’s hidden lips. “Quite.” He felt her hands wrap around his collar and before he could react he was pulled forward. He lost his balance and both he and Officer Griffin tumbled to the hard, metal floor.
“Son of a… ” he muttered and she was on top of him in an instant, peppering his face and neck with kisses. “The Mayor doesn’t really want to see me, does he?”
“He does.” She kissed him on the mouth. It was a long and greedy kiss that made Gerald all the more aware that he had neither brushed his teeth nor showered in more than three days. Griffin didn’t seem to mind. “Kendall wants to see you. But not ‘till morning. You think you’re important enough that Kendall’d disturb his precious dinner for you? Not bloody likely.”
“Jesus, Marisa. You had me worried. Bringing me in here… ” His fading concern wasn’t stopping him from unbuttoning the front of her uniform with fast and clumsy fingers.
“When are you going to learn to trust me, Gerry?”
“That, my dear, is a loaded question. Let’s get reacquainted first and I’ll consider it.”
A large paint can fell off a high shelf and Gerald thought he saw something move in the shadows. He attempted to sit up. She forced him back down with the palm of her hand.
“Just fuck me, fly boy,” she said.
They spent the next three hours getting reacquainted.
(•••)
His name was Taylor and he was more mountain than man. The behemoth had little to say as he led Gerald down the low-lit metal and glass corridor that bisected the station’s administrative suite of offices. Gerald eyed the hulk as he followed him and wondered if he favored salvage pilots for breakfast. And I’m on the menu, Gerald thought.
Taylor left Gerald in the antechamber of the Mayor’s private office. Gerald proceeded to examine the walls, not out of boredom, but out of suppressed awe. Real wood panels obscured the chamber’s more mundane surfaces. Gerald leaned in close. The panels had an aged look to them, like the trees had come from Earth herself—very expensive stuff. They were stained a deep red and lined with shallow shelves that contained actual paper books. The only things paper was used for nowadays were administrative nonsense, archiving, and cheap advertising. That meant the books were older than god himself.
Gerald sat down on a leather couch. The piece of furniture made a squelching sound and conformed to the shape of his body. The sensation was supposed to be pleasant, but Gerald felt groped from all sides by the furniture. He got up as quickly as he had seated himself. The cushions were reluctant to let go and did so with a hiss. He walked along the Mayor’s personal library instead, and trailed his index finger over the ancient spine of one of the tomes; the title was in a language he’d never seen before. There wasn’t a single fleck of dust on the book—quite a feat of caretaking in a place like Crescent, considering that three quarters of the universe’s dust originated on that very station, or so Gerald believed. As he moved along the neatly organized rows of books, Gerald couldn’t help but notice the door to Mayor Kendall’s office was open a sliver. He approached the door and heard what sounded like a good old fashioned scolding.
“Dr. Cortez, we are happy to accommodate you on Crescent. As I’m sure you’ve seen in your short stay, your donations have gone a long way. However, I cannot allow you and your daughter to snoop around where you don’t belong, trying to find some place that doesn’t even exist. There is no buried treasure on this station. Those decks are off limits for safety reasons. If it were anyone else, they would have been kicked off the station. In fact, the guard that your daughter bribed is being sent away on the next transport. I take these matters seriously. I am tolerant, Dr. Cortez. Extremely tolerant, I’m sure you’ll agree. But I can’t have you going down there. Consider this a warning. You are a smart man. You know next time I won’t be as forgiving. Your daughter is a very pretty girl. Let’s keep it that way.”
“Yes,” Gerald heard a soft, male voice say—heavy with the sound of acquiescence, and trembling ever-so-slightly. “I apologize.”
“Do not apologize. Just assure me that it won’t happen again.”
“It won’t happen again.”
“Good. In that case, Dr. Cortez, You and I are done for today.”
Gerald hurried back to the hungry couch and sat down; the cushions purred and enveloped him. The office door opened fully and a trapezoid of light fell across the dark carpet, revealing a woven pattern of vines that coiled and twined on one another like verdant barbed wire. Roses the dark color of wine blossomed along the green tentacles. It struck Gerald as more beastly than beautiful. His reverie was broken as a shadow spread across the rug. A stocky man with a crazy mop of curly white hair dashed out of the office; he clutched a small, flat personal terminal close to his chest. Tiny eyes darted to Gerald and then to the exit. The man, presumably Dr. Cortez, was escorted by two roughnecks. One of them was tall and fiery stubble covered most of his freckled cheeks. The shorter one was all grease and slick hair with a wad of tobacco stuffed into his cheek that was so big it looked like his face might burst. Cortez’s escorts didn’t spare Gerald a single glance.
“Come in, Gerald,” the metered drawl of Mayor Kendall drifted from the office.
The Mayor’s office continued the theme of the antechamber. The walls were stained burgundy and volume-lined. A wide desk with wood side-panels and a dozen or more liquid crystal displays set into its top stood at the aft of the room. Each monitor glowed with a different scene, showing a combination of security camera feeds and news feeds. A big, octagonal viewport stood beyond the desk and showed the night face of Anrar III; the deep orange sun, Anrar, blazed as a necklace of light over the curve of the large planet. Its light flooded the office like day glow. A shimmering hologram hovered above one of the camera feeds, appearing as a diffuse negative from Gerald’s perspective.
“Gerald, I won’t keep you long. I am well aware that you just arrived from a lengthy salvage trip. Men have needs after trips like this.” Mayor Kendall’s tall, lanky frame was silhouetted by the glow of the star. He had his back to Gerald. “Far be it from me to deny you of these needs.” Kendall turned and stepped out of the glare. He extended his hand to Gerald. Blazing sunlight caught in the wisps of Kendall’s thin, gray hair making the strands glow like heated filaments. Gerald took Kendall’s slender hand for a quick, firm hand shake. Kendall’s pink lips curved into a grin, but the smile did not spread across his pale face. He let go of Gerald’s hand and strolled back behind his desk. The mayor waved a hand through the floating holographic projection that still hovered above the desk. It winked out of existence.
“Sit, Gerald. You’re making me nervous.” Kendall’s lips twitched with another smile, but there was little fondness in the mayor’s watery eyes.
Gerald smiled and gestured to the large, leather chair behind the desk.
“You first, Mayor,” he said, and Kendall laughed. The sound of it set Gerald on edge.
“Very well, then.” Kendall seated himself and Gerald sat down across from him. Gerald was thankful when the chair didn’t try to cop a feel. “In short, Gerald, I’m looking for a good salvage man. Core Sec has appointed Crescent the salvage hub of this system and the neighboring Tireca system. With all the recent raids on miners and the like, Crescent stands to do very well with the influx of scrap, ore, and whatever else is floating out there. I need a reliable man to get out there and haul. A trustworthy man who won’t si
phon off some of the salvage for himself.”
“And why exactly am I that man?”
“You’ve done four jobs for me in the past, Gerald.” Kendall paused and spread his hands out over the monitors. “Four jobs and I haven’t had to order you killed yet. That’s a pretty good track record in my book.” Kendall laughed again, though he made no joke. “You will be paid three times your non-contract commission.”
Gerald knew he would have to say yes or he’d never get a job from Crescent again. Not that that would have been a huge loss. Crescent wasn’t exactly a vacation resort. Not to mention, Gerald wasn’t thrilled about being contractually obligated to a man like Kendall. It was one thing to do a job or two for someone. It was another thing entirely when they owned your ass. But, three times Gerald’s non-contract rate—that was a lot of cash. More than Gerald could make in a year. He thought of his brother’s message. Was Kendall’s offer a coincidence or a chance to get on the right track, with a head start to boot? Fate or fool’s luck. Kendall placed an envelope on the desktop.
“There’s a data wafer in there. It has the details of the contract. Take it with you. Review it and let me know tomorrow. It’s a big decision and I won’t rush you. We’re done here for now.”
Gerald placed the envelope into the breast pocket of his flight jacket and left the office.
(•••)
Gerald tottered out of Heathen’s and onto Main Street. A faint blue glow trickled down from the sun globes—the shadows held sway now. A big clock disc floated over the distant Main Street exit tunnel. It was 3:45 a.m. Gerald’s head felt like it was stuffed with gauze. He had finally managed to have that drink, and countless more had followed. The occasion for the revelry: he had decided to accept Kendall’s offer and felt obliged to celebrate.
