by Gwynn White
“Don’t drink too much. You’ll make yourself sick.”
“She’s not that hot. I admitted that already. It was the atmosphere.”
“And nothing she said made you suspect that she was working for a smuggler?
“We didn’t talk about our jobs.”
Kristiansen dropped to the floor, water cupped in his hands. He brought it to Colden’s lips. Watching Colden drink from his hands, Elfrida felt a spike of envy. Maybe Colden was right, because no one she’d ever dated or hooked up with, and that definitely included Nell the smuggler, had ever put her needs first.
“I wish we could see outside. I’d like to know where we are,” Kristiansen said.
“Parked at the top of that shaft,” Colden said.
“Yes, but we might have to make it back to YM City by ourselves. Did it sound to you like they were planning to take us there?”
“No,” Colden admitted. “But look on the bright side. They rescued us, and they’ve got painkillers.”
“I think that medibot gave you too much,” Kristiansen muttered. He turned to Elfrida. “What kind of vibes did you get from Brad?”
“Mostly, I was just staring at his beard. But … that stuff about ‘we make our own laws’? Kind of scary.”
“The word you’re looking for is ideological. These people are dangerous. I’ve heard stories from my father about colonists in the Belt. Living out here can drive people crazy. The way Dad puts it, ‘Bad ideas expand to fill the available volume.’ Sometimes they turn violent.”
“That’s what your father says, I expect, because that’s all Star Force ever sees. Why can’t they just be trafficking in luxury comestibles?”
“Why can’t they be both?”
Nell returned, interrupting the argument. She was juggling hot pouches of coffee and soup. “Here, I didn’t know which you wanted, so I brought both. Looks like you got most of it off. Come on.”
Distracted by the hot drinks, the trio trailed after her. The crew quarters were arranged modular-style around the central ladder that went down to the hold and, presumably, up to the bridge. Nell touched a button and ushered them into a room that must have taken up half the crew deck.
The ceiling was covered with sagging quilts and straps. It was like a giant version of the cocoons that the Space Corps trainees slept in aboard the Sargent Shriver. The quilts were black, stenciled with giant pink vulvas.
“This is our bedroom, obviously,” Nell said. She pulled herself up by a strap and reached into the storage webbing at the head of the bed. “I was sure they were in here,” she muttered. Elfrida, Kristiansen, and Colden drank hot soup, round-eyed, watching her dig in the nets. At last she dropped back to the floor. “I’ll—I’ll be right back. Don’t go anywhere.”
After the door closed behind Nell, there was a moment of silence. Colden said, “Our bedroom?”
“I guess they’re not just shipmates,” Elfrida said. She was blushing, although she had no reason to be embarrassed, she thought.
“That bed looks big enough for all of them. And that up there? Looks like restraints. A smuggling gang that’s also a kinky foursome. This gets better and better.”
“As long as they don’t expect us to join in,” Kristiansen said. “I mean, I’d do the girls, but that Brad character …”
“Would you, Kristiansen?” Colden turned on him. “Would you do the girls, really?”
“I … guess not.” Now Kristiansen was blushing. “I just meant … I don’t know.”
“We’re not Malone and Chung and those guys,” Colden said. “We’re not going to laugh at you because you don’t try to screw everything on two legs. That’s actually one of the things I like about you.”
Kristiansen got even redder. To save him from further embarrassment, and because she didn’t feel like she should be part of this conversation, Elfrida said, “I wonder what Nell went to look for.”
“Her stash of lovejuice,” Colden said without cracking a smile.
Abruptly, a deep voice spoke from the ceiling. “Hi. I’m Tom.”
“Oh, God,” Elfrida said. “It’s their love slave.” Those quilts could easily have concealed a person or two.
“Not exactly,” said the voice. “I’m the hub of this ship.”
“You sounded different earlier,” Elfrida said suspiciously.
“Acknowledged. I’m acting out of character here. But I have certain high-priority directives, so that’s that.”
Colden was clutching her miraculous medal. Kristiansen was clutching Colden. It was always unnerving to be addressed by a very smart MI (mechanical intelligence). Ship hubs were best of breed—they had to be, to do the fiendishly complicated job of operating a spaceship. In fact, they were the closest thing to true AI permitted under UN law.
“You are on the Love Shack, a refurbished MarathonFlyer owned by Brad Layemall,” Tom the hub informed them. “We are presently parked in the extended landing zone of Neith Spaceport. Here, have a look.”
A big screen on the wall came to life. At first the picture was upside-down, but it soon flipped to show them a landscape of surreal ice hills.
“It’s still under construction,” the hub noted.
The landscape looked like a snapshot of splashing water. Soaring ridges and blobby spires reared against the face of Jupiter.
“Those formations are frozen effluent from the excavation of Ganymede’s new underground habitat,” the hub said. “They aren’t as high as they look. You should be able to climb them rather easily.”
“Oh, hell, no,” Colden exclaimed. “We’re not going out there. I have a bust knee.”
“That is, of course, your decision to make. However, I must inform you that Captain Layemall is carrying out pre-launch procedures. He plans to depart as soon as his fourth crewperson gets back with their associate, that sandwich-truck operator, whom I gather you disabled; good going.”
“And, what?” Elfrida said. “They’re going to take us with them?”
“Unclear. Nell wants to take you. Qiana wants to space you. The captain appears to be weighing his options.”
The trio stared at the ceiling in shock. “That would be murder,” Kristiansen said.
The sepulchral voice of the hub said from amid the vulvas, “Three passengers, or four counting Mr. Dibbs, would place considerable strain on this ship’s life-support systems.”
Elfrida said, “If they take us, where would we end up? Where are they going?”
“First stop 95837 Buttcrack,” said the hub. “It’s an asteroid colony. You’ve never heard of it. There are a great many asteroid colonies you have never heard of. But I’ve been there before, so you can take it from me. It is not a civilized locale.”
“How not?”
“Think Ganymede, squared.”
For a moment they were all silent.
Kristiansen said, “You hear stories. P-p-people do sometimes just … vanish.”
Elfrida thought: People do sometimes just … escape.
She was so sick of being ordered around. Jerked around. Told what to do. By a machine, yet.
The hub said, “If you wish to leave the ship now, I can assist you. The EVA suits are in a locker in the cargo hold, next to the airlock, and—”
Silence fell as if a switch had been flipped. Nell came back into the bedroom with her shipmate, Qiana, who had lavender skin and fiery red hair, and was wearing a coat of POCK fur.
“Found them,” Nell smiled. She held up a handful of ankle cuffs decorated with sequins and pink feathers. “Aren’t they cute? Well, maybe not for a guy. But just between us, Brad really likes them.”
Elfrida had dabbled sufficiently in BDSM to know that she was looking at electronic restraints. These cute accessories would deliver a shock that could be dialed up from “mildly unpleasant” to “stun an elephant.” Some people liked their titillation very, very rough.
“If you each put one on, it’ll be like you’re part of the gang. Here,” Nell held one of the restraints out to Elfrida. “It�
�ll look great with that, um, heavy-duty polydown coat!”
Elfrida stared at the woman in front of her. Nell had deceived her. Was trying to deceive her again, right this second.
But Elfrida had one advantage.
She had been so disgusting when she came out of that crate that no one had cared to search her.
So she still had Mr. C.M.O.T. Sandwiches’s pistol in her pocket.
She whipped it out and stuck it in Nell’s face. “Frag off, you stupid—” She caught sight of the tail. Nell had her EVA suit off now, and the tail was taped to her back. It looked less prehensile than ornamental. “Monkey! Frag off, you monkey! We didn’t ask to be part of your gang! So, thanks but no thanks!”
She backed Nell and Qiana up against the wall. Then she pushed the pistol into Kristiansen’s hands. “Shoot them if Brad tries to do anything stupid, like taking off.”
She flew out of the room and back down the ladder to the hold.
“Tom?” she yelled. No answer came. The hub had said the EVA suits were in a locker … here. She yanked it open and took what looked like the most rad-proof one, a second-skin with a baggy external garment that weighed a ton, even in Ganymede’s gravity. She kept her underwear on. She wasn’t going to be in the suit very long, hopefully.
The airlock worked the same as every other airlock in the solar system.
She tumbled down retractable stairs, between the Love Shack’s jackstands, onto bloodstained ice.
The maglevator track stuck out of the top of the shaft, only a few meters away, like a giant Ferris wheel with no cars on it.
She took a minute to get her bearings, and the voice of Tom the hub spoke in her helmet. “Sorry I couldn’t communicate with you earlier. I didn’t want to blow my cover. But you’re doing well.”
“You’re an undercover MI? Never mind. Which way do I go?”
“That way,” the hub said, and a red arrow appeared on the inside of her faceplate.
Pointing towards the ice hills.
“I’d hurry if I were you. Just standing here, you’ll absorb a minimum of 1,000 millisieverts per hour at current radiation levels.”
Chapter Four
Elfrida ran.
It reminded her of disembarking from the Sargent Shriver three days ago, running towards the rovers that had come to meet them.
This is a test, she had thought at the time, but she’d been wrong.
This was the test.
Elfrida versus Ganymede.
Elfrida versus Jupiter, the gas giant glowering down upon her, flinging out lethal radiation from its billion-year-old storms, as if in a calculated attempt to drive humanity out of its territory.
Tom the hub kept her updated on the dosage she was receiving, until she begged it to stop. She couldn’t think about chromosomal damage or lymphoma a decade down the line. She had to think about where she was putting her feet.
The ice flung from the bowels of the moon was unholy stuff, slick as hell. She scrambled over the thick blue waves, relying on the gecko grips embedded in the suit’s boots and gloves. Sometimes, she lost her grip and slid, head over heels. She was tired, dizzy, thirsty. Her suit gave her a drink of glucose solution. She promptly threw it up inside her helmet.
“Don’t fall again,” Tom the hub told her urgently, now that she was sharing her helmet with a viscous blob of vomit. “If that gets in your nose and mouth, it’s all over! You must stay upright.”
“I can’t,” Elfrida sobbed. “I’m beat.”
“You’re almost there. Look!”
Her suit painted a red circle around an object that looked like a thumbtack pushed into the ridge ahead of her.
The Sargent Shriver.
It was not on top of the ridge, of course, but on the far side. Elfrida tottered down the final slope into Neith Spaceport.
The Sargent Shriver was by no means the largest ship parked on the penedome. Cyclers the size of asteroids loomed beyond it, taking on legitimate exports of food and H2O. Normally, ships this size were not allowed to put down on inhabited rocks, but the surface of Ganymede was so awash in radiation that the normal rules didn’t apply.
Elfrida stumbled towards the ship that had been her home for the last two years. The juniors were still on board, safe and cozy within the ship’s radiation shields. How shocked they’d be when they heard her tale. Half of them would probably quit on the spot.
“Hey!” Tom the hub said. “You’re going the wrong way!”
“Going to the Sargent Shriver.”
“They aren’t expecting you! And you haven’t time to stand around out here, trying to convince them that you’re not a smuggler / panhandler / asylum seeker! The spaceport terminal is right over there. Come on. You can make it.”
A new arrow appeared, pointing her towards the igloo-shaped terminal.
Grinding her teeth, Elfrida followed it.
Vomit jiggled, obscuring the lower third of her faceplate. She fell off the side of the ramp that the rovers had rolled down on their arrival. She landed on her back, in artificial light, with her own puke sticking to her face.
She spat, coughed, blew air out of her nose.
The suit’s air circulation wheezed. Her vomit had gone into the tubes, or clogged the CO2 filtration mesh, or something like that.
She ran. Rovers, maintenance bots, forklifts, and people in suits got out of her way. They were probably talking to her, but there was some kind of security block on the suit’s radio, preventing her from talking to anyone apart from Tom the hub. She didn’t have time to stop and figure it out. She dashed onto the maglevator platform.
A capsule had just arrived; people were crowding aboard. She squeezed in with them, earning herself a bunch of dirty looks. Unmarked spacesuits were not popular. People who didn’t answer when spoken to were even less popular. She could have been anyone.
The maglevator glided around the loop and plunged down the shaft. Elfrida’s seat swung. Her suit’s air circulation bubbled pitifully.
“I’m going to have to sign off now,” said Tom the hub. “You’re moving out of my signal range.”
“I’m dying!”
“No, you’re not. You’ve done very well. But when you get to YM City, alert your people as quickly as possible. The situation here has developed into a stand-off, and Captain Layemall is getting quite angry.”
Elfrida scarcely took in the ominous update. She was preoccupied with the rising CO2 content of her suit’s air supply.
I cannot die like this.
She compared herself to the law-abiding people sitting all around her. A trip into the crust of Ganymede was just part of their day.
I’ll never be dissatisfied again, I’ll never even break curfew, I’ll say ‘Yes sir’ and ‘No sir,’ I’ll go where I’m sent and do what I’m told. Just let me survive ...
The capsule braked. They were in the airlock. A screen on the wall, which Elfrida had not seen on her first trip down, blinked: WAIT … WAIT … WAIT … OK! YOU CAN TAKE YOUR HELMETS OFF NOW!
She ripped at her helmet seals. Vomit spilled over her hands, down her front. She gasped, and smiled in embarrassment. People looked away.
At the bottom of the maglevator shaft, a few people got off at the station where the 77’ers had disembarked before. Most stayed on, and Elfrida stayed on with them. She guessed that the maglevator went all the way to YM City, and she was right. The capsule halted in a busy station. Elfrida followed the crowd onto a moving walkway.
UNSA outreach coordinator Shyaka could have just taken the Space Corps grads here, instead of making them walk through the farm, she reflected. But then they wouldn’t have been shocked by the isolation of the fields cloaked in pink fog. They would have concluded that this place was just like Earth, with less gravity.
And it wasn’t, of course.
Nothing like it at all.
She ducked into a restroom and removed her spacesuit. She couldn’t walk around in this unmarked thing without getting stopped, and she needed to not get s
topped. Colden and Kristiansen’s lives depended on it.
Now she was barefoot, in her underwear.
What to do?
After a moment’s hesitation, Elfrida flung the door of the stall open and strode forth, clad in a black sports bra and frayed boyshorts with Kiss My ↓ printed on the butt.
No one gave her a second glance.
After all, this was YM City.
Out in the street, she passed many people wearing even less than she was, albeit with more panache. And with shoes.
And personal infrared heaters hidden in their skivvies, I bet, Elfrida thought. It was chilly, even inside the dome. Gooseflesh stippled her body.
She looked around for landmarks. She was in the Z-Zone. Their hotel was in the M-Zone, on the other side of the city. What would be the point of going back to their hotel, anyway? She needed help. Colden and Kristiansen needed help, and they needed it now.
With her contacts back online, Elfrida scrolled through the visitor’s guide they had all been issued. Something was missing, and it was so glaring an absence that she searched the guidebook by keyword, sure she’d just overlooked the entry.
SEARCH FOR: Police.
No results found.
Ganymede had no police force.
SEARCH FOR: Star Force. There had to be a military presence in this volume. Although how they could help from orbit, she wasn’t sure.
Do you wish to report a PLAN sighting?
Elfrida shuddered and closed that window. Only one option remained. With a sinking heart, she texted @unsa_outreach.ganymede.
“Shyaka. Help you, Ms. Goto?”
Elfrida kept walking as she gaze-typed her reply. “Yes, sir. I guess you don’t have a police force here, but does UNSA have a militia? Drones? Something? My friends are in trouble.”
“Where are you, Ms. Goto?”
“Locate my signal,” Elfrida typed impatiently. She was already forgetting her resolution to mind her manners. “Can you help, or not? It’s urgent!”
“What’s going on? What the fuck are you doing back here? What happened to your clothes?”
Elfrida did not respond. Pricked by inchoate fear, she started to walk faster. She remembered Colden’s belief that Shyaka was mixed up in the POCK-smuggling racket. That he’d deliberately set them up to fail a test which could still cost Colden and Kristiansen their lives.
