by Rick Partlow
“What if I fuck up?” She wondered, just a hint of a tremulous note in her voice.
“We’re going to the Pirate Worlds, Cap,” I reminded her. “We’re going to be surrounded by criminals and spies.” I forced a grin. “If you fuck up, you’ll be dead. And so will the rest of us.” I moved toward the passageway, intent on getting some sleep. “So, don’t fuck up.”
Chapter Seven
I’d traveled through T-space at least a couple dozen times in my life, starting when Mom had hauled me to Hermes for a “vacation” that mostly involved her schmoozing with other executives when I was about eight years old. They’d let me onto the command bridge of the Corporate transport for the conversion and I remember the ship’s Captain had told me about the computer negotiating our course and orbit automatically with the traffic control systems in orbit around Hermes. I could see on the ship’s sensor display that there were hundreds of other ships in orbit, some heading to the civilian or military stations, some carrying cargo to or from the orbital industrial plants, all dancing to the complex tune that the computers played for them.
Arriving at Thunderhead was nothing like that. The universe had unfolded around us and deposited the Wanderer just past the orbit of Thunderhead’s major moon, Stormbringer, and I was adjusting to the return of microgravity and getting my first look at the blues and greens and angry, swirling whites of the planet when Kane glanced over and touched a control on the communications panel.
“This is Freeport Control,” a human voice said, sounding annoyed at the interruption. “Who are you and what do you want?”
I glanced over at Captain Yassa, the only other member of the crew who’d come to the cockpit for the landing. She shook her head and raised her hands palm up in a clear “I have no clue” gesture.
“This is the independent freighter Wanderer,” I said into the audio pickup, improvising. “We’re here on business, looking for work.”
“There’s a $200 landing fee, payable in Tradenotes or Corporate Scrip,” Freeport Control informed us. “You’ll pay it when you land or you won’t be allowed to take off again. You’re currently being targeted by a laser defense system that can reach anywhere between the surface and lunar orbit, so you will stay in the approach corridor I’m sending to your navigation system. If you deviate, you’ll be blown to vapors. Is all that clear, Wanderer?”
“Read you five by five, Freeport Control,” I assured him. “We will stick to the prescribed flight corridor. Wanderer out.” I cut the connection and looked over at Kane. “You got the flight plan?”
He nodded once.
“Then take us down.”
“See those clouds?” Kane pointed to the display, where quickly spinning storms of angry skull-white swirled over the major continent of the Northern Hemisphere.
“That’s where we’re going?” Yassa demanded a bit too loudly.
“This is Munroe,” I said over the ship’s intercom. “Everyone strap in, and grab a motion-sickness patch if you’re so inclined. It’s going to be a rough ride down.”
I felt acceleration press me back into the cushion of my seat as the fusion drive ignited, and I cursed as I slipped my arms into the restraints hurriedly.
“I just told them, Kane,” I grumbled. “You could have given everyone a second.”
He said just what I expected him to, which was nothing at all, but I was already grabbing a motion sickness patch from the supply in a pocket of the acceleration couch. Peeling the backing off, I slapped it onto my neck. I had a sudden thought about what memories that the sights of the patch might dredge up in Captain Yassa, and I shot her a worried look.
“It’s okay, Munroe,” she assured me, smiling grimly. “I don’t get motion sickness.”
The drive took us along the approach corridor at a steady one gravity of acceleration and it wasn’t that long before we slipped around to the night side of the planet, darkness swallowing us as the primary star fell out of sight behind the midnight blue of Thunderhead’s largest ocean. No one lived on the coasts, I’d read in Cowboy’s files. The size and proximity of the moon caused tides that bashed at the shore like sledgehammers, leaving bare, naked rock in its wake. Sea farms or undersea mining was impossible with the storms, and the frequent windstorms made the open plains a nightmare. The only cities, such as they were, were nestled in isolated valleys between the largest mountain ranges, sheltered from the worst of the storms.
We had to fly through that.
The ship shuddered as the atmosphere thickened around us, from a wisp of baby’s breath to a soup of turbulence that battered the Wanderer mercilessly. My fingers dug into the soft, malleable plastic of the acceleration couch’s armrests as my stomach did flips and the seat kept trying to jump away from me. I could hear the whine of the turbojets through the bangs and jolts of the winds that assaulted us, and while I knew on an intellectual level that the cutter had enough power to force its way through anything in that atmosphere, what I knew in my head wasn’t quite making its way to my gut.
Thank God for motion sickness patches.
The turbulence didn’t let up until we emerged from the lower level of clouds only a few hundred meters over the spaceport. Well, to call it a spaceport was stretching the truth; it was a landing field, nothing more, and you could see that even at night, from three hundred meters up. It was packed with ships, but they were mostly heavy lift cargo craft and orbital shuttles; the only other starships were two cutters like ours, military surplus or maybe stolen, given where we were. Floodlights illuminated the field from poles set every fifty meters around the perimeter, and there was a building of some kind set up on the only paved road out of the field.
Then the view disappeared in a spray of steam and sand as the Wanderer descended on columns of fire from the landing jets, the whole boat shaking with the effort and then touching down with a jolt on five massive skids. I felt the slight bounce as the ship settled down onto the landing gear, then the fading whine as the turbines spun down and I let out the breath I’d been holding. The display went dark and Kane swiveled his seat around to face me.
“I can stay here,” he volunteered. “For air support.”
I thought about it for a moment. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to leave someone with the ship, but would it be smart to leave a guy who was the only one who could possibly crack the encryption codes to fly it without my permission and had a big incentive to go sell it somewhere and use the money to fix his body up with bionics?
“No,” I decided. “With all the EM interference here, we wouldn’t be able to call you even if we did need help. It’s better if we stick together.” He shrugged, and I couldn’t tell if he was disappointed or not.
Everyone was waiting in the utility bay, gathered around the weapons locker like kids at a toy box. I shook my head slightly. Well, the kind of people willing to go get shot at for money because they were bored with their lives probably weren’t the ones I could expect to have a mature attitude about being issued a gun.
I touched the ID plate on the locker and the door popped open, revealing a double rack of firearms, handguns across the top, carbines on the bottom, ten of each with cases of loaded magazines stacked on a shelf above them and a loose collection of belt and shoulder holsters jammed in-between.
Bobbi pulled out one of the carbines and gave it a cursory inspection, racking open the grenade launcher affixed under the barrel. It was a Gauss rifle, standard issue when the two of us had been Recon Marines, a bit dated now.
“Just sidearms for now,” I said, slipping off my jacket and shrugging into a shoulder holster before grabbing one of the pistols for myself. I stuffed a few spare magazines into the pockets, then zipped the coat up. “We can come back and get heavier weapons if we need them.” I motioned to a smaller locker off to the side. “There’re commercial enhanced optics glasses in there that’ll synch to the gun’s sights if you need them.”
I didn’t; I still had the contact lens. It wasn’t as versatile as the enhanced
optics, but it also couldn’t get knocked off your face and kill your night vision in a fight.
Bobbi scowled as she put the carbine back in the rack and grabbed a handgun. “What do you think we can accomplish with these popguns, Munroe?” She asked me, popping the magazine out of the ZWH pistol and checking its load. The variable-warhead, rocket-assisted round straining against the feed lips gleamed a dull silver in the stark light of the bay.
“We’re here to get hired,” I reminded her, trying to summon patience I didn’t ever recall having, “and gather intelligence. When the time comes for breaking shit and blowing things up, you’ll be the first in line for the big stuff.”
Once everyone had got what they needed, I sealed the locker and led them over to the boarding ramp. It was raining outside, and a few drops blew in as the ramp lowered, cold against the bare skin of my face. I let the others go ahead of me, and when I closed the ramp, I activated the security seal. That meant that only Captain Yassa or I could open it, though I hadn’t actually told her about it yet. Walking out from under the nose of the Wanderer, I felt the rain and wind smack me in the face and my boots nearly slipped out from under me in the thin coat of mud on the fusion-form landing field.
I stared up into the roiling clouds and saw lightning forking across the sky, its glow illuminating the slopes of the mountains surrounding the town. Thunder trailed a second later, echoing back and forth across the valley.
“That’s not all ominous or anything,” Ibanez said, smiling crookedly. I grinned back at her; it was impossible to dislike the woman.
I walked through the midst of them and headed for the lone building, more like a shack, out near the edge of the field. It was about a half a kilometer of walking, and by the end I was feeling pretty glad my jacket and boots were waterproof. It was a small building, but everyone crammed into it anyway, and the skinny, unhealthy looking little man behind the single desk inside eyed us suspiciously as we dripped water and tracked mud on the plastic sheeting that lined the floor beside the single entrance. He was dressed in practical clothes that looked more hand-made than fabricated, which might cost less out here for all I knew, and he wasn’t armed.
Behind me, I could hear the door creek shut as the last of us made it inside, slamming at the end as the wind gave it a final, spiteful shove.
“You off the Wanderer?” He asked us, looking around for someone to focus on.
“Yes,” I answered, giving him a target for his stare. I reached into a pocket and withdrew a dataspike, flipping it over to him. “There’s the port fees,” I explained as he caught it with an awkward grab.
He made a face at the spike, but then jabbed it into a reader built into the cheap, plastic desk and nodded at the figure that came up on the display.
“Two hundred in Corporate Scrip,” he confirmed. He eyed me sidelong. “You want to hire protection for your boat?”
I rolled my eyes. I guess I should have been expecting that, out here.
“Protection?” That was Victor, sounding outraged. I looked over and held up a hand to silence his protest. Arguing with the sad sack behind the desk would accomplish less than nothing. And on a place like this, maybe it was just the cost of doing business.
“How much is it?” I wondered. “And what do we get for it?”
“Three hundred per day,” the little man told me, smiling so widely I knew he must get a big cut of that.
“Local day?” Bobbi cut in, eyebrows rising. “Those are only eighteen standard hours long!”
“We have quite a few people in our party,” I mused, remembering my days haggling with the merchants in the Zocalo in Trans-Angeles. “It wouldn’t be that big of a deal to leave someone behind to keep an eye on the ship, I suppose…”
“I know the people who offer the service,” the little man hemmed, acting as if the savings were coming directly out of his flesh. “Maybe I can talk them down to…two hundred a day?”
“We’re going to be here probably at least a local week,” I told him. “How about we give you a thousand for the week, ahead of time, in Tradenotes?” I fished the roll of bills out of my pocket and peeled off ten of the twenty dollar notes, handing them over to him.
“You drive a hard bargain, sir,” he said, but he nodded.
“How about arranging us a ride into town?” I asked him, handing over an extra twenty.
He looked at the eight of us, scratching at his scraggly, grey-streaked beard. “It’ll cost you more with so many,” he warned me. “They’ll have to send a truck.”
“That’s fine,” I assured him. It was better than walking the two or three kilometers into town in the rain, and just like in the Zocalo in Trans-Angeles, it was all someone else’s money.
***
Freeport wasn’t as ugly and primitive as I’d thought it would be. The buildings were mostly one-story, probably because of the high winds they could get even down here in the sheltered river valley, but they looked quaint and homey, built from local wood and stone instead of buildfoam and concrete, and fleshed out with the personalities of the people who lived and worked in them.
The truck had dropped us off at the heart of the hospitality district, rolling slowly through the darkened and sleeping apartments and townhouses at the edge of town, through the shops and storehouses closed now for the night, and into the part of Freeport that never slept. It was fairly crowded for that late at night and lights blinked teasingly from hotels, restaurants and clubs catering to spacers.
Smugglers, I corrected myself. Honest spacers wouldn’t be out in the Pirate Worlds. They’d be smugglers, pirates, mercenaries, thieves and probably criminals whose specialties I hadn’t even heard of. I watched them passing by us on the muddy streets, motley packs of individuals, more mangy and ruthless looking than any of the wolves I’d seen on Earth or Demeter. Two meter tall Belters toddled alongside squat, broad-bodied trolls from high gravity worlds, and here, bionics were a rule more than an exception; not surprising given how rare and expensive high-tech medical procedures would be out here. Weapons were also the rule, most worn openly, which was even less surprising. I kept wanting to reach under my jacket to make sure mine was still there, but I resisted the temptation and tried to look calmer and more confident than I felt.
The others seemed to be doing okay. I thought Victor and Kurt might be rubbernecking like tourists, but I guess their time at Belial had inured them to the strangeness and variety. Sanders was looking around, but he’d settled down since Hermes and was at least trying to be cool, and even looked more dangerous behind the mirrored shield of his enhanced optics glasses. Bobbi regarded everyone evenly, quite obviously calculating in her head if she could kill each of them and just as obviously deciding that, yes, she could. Carmen Ibanez seemed coolly fascinated, ready if anything happened but content just to be experiencing something new.
And Yassa…she was stiff-backed and uncomfortable, her left hand hovering around the pistol holstered high on her hip. She wasn’t afraid, I was pretty sure…she hadn’t struck me as someone who was afraid of much. I had a suspicion she was keyed up by the proximity of the bars, and the knowledge that inside were undoubtedly the drugs she’d surrendered to some months ago, and to which she probably still had a psychological dependency if not a physical one.
“There’s the place,” I said, nodding to the biggest, brightest and busiest of the joints on the strip.
It was four stories tall, which made practically made it a skyscraper here in Freeport, at least a hundred meters on a side and covered with advertising holos that offered the best food, the best liquor, the best drugs, the best ViR, the best sex dolls and the best hookers on the planet. It was called the Lucky Bastard and it was where Cowboy had suggested we look for Abuelo’s people.
“We should split up into groups of two,” I suggested, stepping out of the flow of traffic and wiping the rain from my face. It had died down but it was still drizzling, and I could feel it matting my hair. “Victor and Kurt,” I said, focusing on the br
others, “you guys go get a table, order some food. If there’s a human server,” likely in a place like this where spare parts for automated service ‘bots would be harder to come by than humans desperate for a job, “try to chat them up, find out what you can. Slip them a few bucks if you have to.” I’d given everyone a small supply of Tradenotes for spending money, tips and possible bribes.
“Sanders,” I said to him, “you and Taylor go try gambling. Lose a little if you have to, whatever gets the others talking.” He nodded, and Bobbi Taylor shot me a knowing look, realizing I was having her team up with him because he was cautious and she was not.
“Kane, you and Carmen hit the ViR rooms. If their firewalls aren’t too strong, maybe you” I looked to Kane, “can penetrate their central systems and dig up some data. Carmen, watch his back in case they twig to what he’s doing.”
I motioned to the main entrance, about twenty meters from us down the street and lit up like mid-day with a ring of lights. “Go on in. If you need to find me or Captain Yassa, we’ll be at the main bar. If we get separated, meet at the rally point no later than 0100 local.”
The six of them drifted into the place two at a time, each of the pairs pausing instinctively to put some space between one group and the next. I found myself nodding appreciatively. I hadn’t had a lot of time or a lot of choice picking this team, and it was nice to see they hadn’t forgotten everything they’d learned.
I offered Captain Yassa an arm and she regarded it doubtfully for a moment before she took it and we headed inside. I could feel her stiffness and hesitation, but she kept walking.
“Some paradise they got here,” she said quietly next to me, almost drowned out as we got closer to the music playing inside. She was keeping her voice even and calm despite the trepidation I knew she was feeling. “Constant storms, winds, electromagnetic interference, earthquakes, and background radiation enough to give you cancer in a few years if you didn’t get the prenatal nanite treatments…and most of these people didn’t.”
