by Alan Black
“You wouldn’t be standing here if you’d shared the experience. Slavers take children and some adults for the sex trade or for domestic servitude. You’re good looking enough to end up on that side of the business. On the other hand, you also have the look of a man who’d cause problems. Most likely you’d be sent to some unnamed planet and worked to death for someone else’s profit. If a person comes from a rich family, they might be ransomed back. Do you come from a rich family?”
“Rich? Not that I know of, no.”
“Then you best not be captured by slavers. It’s not that you’d have to worry about it while living on the station. Doesn’t it still have its automatic anti-ship defenses on line? A slaver’s ship wouldn’t get within a hundred thousand kilometers of this place before the station took it down. It’s a shame Ol’ Empty Space is too far from Liberty to give us protection.”
“Are slaver’s ships a regular thing on Liberty?”
“They aren’t supposed to be. The station’s guns may not protect us, however you have sensors that are supposed to give us warning of approaching vessels, especially those with suspect IDs. Sometimes it happens and sometimes it doesn’t. Slavers don’t actually do sweeping runs on any recognizable pattern or we could take them out ourselves. They swoop down on a small farm or a market somewhere and sweep up whomever they can catch. They mostly kill those they don’t have a use for. The useless ones would be the old, disabled and those too young to leave Mama’s teats. We try to maintain a rapid response team, but the population is really spread out on Liberty. We manage to save a few folks, but we can’t save them all, no matter what the boss thinks.” At the word boss, he nodded his head back toward the shuttle hatch.
“The boss, Master Chief? Are you in command of this contingent?”
Fugget shook his head. “No, sir. The boss on this trip is Lieutenant Junior Grade Altamont. The unit commander is Captain Altamont.”
“Related?”
Fugget nodded, “Yes, sir. The captain is the LT’s poppa and that skinny blue and green haired PO is the LT’s little sister. The captain couldn’t make this trip , his barley fields are ready for harvest.”
“Where is Lieutenant Altamont?”
Fugget laughed. “The last I saw, the LT was storming into the pilot’s cabin to raise hell about the driving.” He stopped talking to shout at a few slow moving rates and turned back. “The LT should be here soon if you can hang around and wait. I need to get the rest of this shuttle unloaded so Ernie can get back to work.”
“Ernie?”
Fugget said, “Ernie’s the shuttle pilot. Being the pilot is only right since it’s his shuttle. Captain Altamont pays him to bring us up here. He has to get back to Liberty since the captain’s fields aren’t the only ones coming to harvest.” He rushed off to berate a few ratings who were leaning on rather than moving crates.
York wandered over to take a closer look at the skyriders. They were flimsy looking contraptions and he couldn’t imagine anyone letting a thirteen year old girl ride one from vacuum through atmosphere. Even with wings, they didn’t look safe. He saw a latch and popped open a cover to get a closer look inside.
“Excuse me, Ensign. May I help you with something?” PO Altamont was at his elbow. The young girl with green and pink hair had startlingly blue eyes.
“No, I was just looking—”
“No, sir,” she interrupted. “You weren’t just looking. You were touching. I realize you might not know, but touching someone else’s rider is bad luck and downright bad manners.”
“I am sorry, miss,” he said. “You are PO Altamont?”
“Yes, sir. Chrissie Altamont, Petty Officer Third Class, Communications Technician.”
“Comms, huh?” He grinned at her. “Me, too. I’m Ensign York Sixteen. I don’t know about your comms duties, but mine are boring as hell. I am sorry about touching your skyrider.”
She shrugged. “That one isn’t mine. That’s Booger’s and he needs a little bad luck if I’m going to beat him on our next ride down.”
“From what I hear, you’re good.”
“Some, yeah. It’s bad luck to brag about it. Booger’s better.”
“It still sounds like a dangerous sport.”
She grinned at him, “Well, Dad says exactly the same thing, except he doesn’t have any way to stop me. It’s my saorsa.”
York looked confused. “Your Saorsa? I thought Saorsa was the name of a city?”
She snorted in laughter covering her mouth and nose. “Excuse me, Ensign. I didn’t mean to laugh at you.”
“Laughing is okay. You go right ahead.”
She went ahead and laughed.
He liked her laugh, fresh and unrestrained, except when she tried to cover up a snort. Her laugh was genuine mirth and not directed at him personally. He silently cursed regulations against fraternization between the ranks. He made a mental note to check regulations to see if she was considered enlisted when she wasn’t on duty, after all she was in the Reserves. Maybe liberty on Liberty wouldn’t be so bad after all.
“Saorsa City isn’t much of a city. Liberty doesn’t have cities. Saorsa City is more of a mobile market or festival since the founders determined we don’t need permanent towns or cities.”
“Master Chief Fugget mentioned Saorsa City.”
“It really isn’t a city. It’s the governor’s road train. And it isn’t really a big train, not like some of the farm equipment sales outfits, but it does act as a mobile government seat. It’s free to move about as it needs to.”
York was confused. “What do you mean you don’t have cities and towns? Where do the people live?”
Chrissie said, “They live on farms and ranches, silly … I mean, Ensign.” She looked embarrassed at her military gaff. She rattled on as if trying to cover up her mistake at calling an officer ‘silly’. “We don’t have anywhere permanent where people cluster together. Why, it’s a good twenty miles to the closest neighbor’s place from our home! People do gather together for harvests and roundups, and when we do, businesses and government offices drive in to join us using trucks, shuttles and road trains. When we go back to work, they go somewhere else.”
“You people seem to set a high value on liberty and freedom.”
Chrissie looked at him as if he really was silly. “Saorsa means freedom in old Gaelic. My saorsa is my freedom. The government, Dad, or Master Chief Fugget can’t stop me from following my own freedom.”
“Even if it means plunging to your death in one of these flying coffins?”
“Huh! That’s what Dad calls my skyrider. Mom calls his motorcycle a two-wheeled organ donor, so he has no room to talk.”
“What’s a motorcycle?”
Chrissie laughed again. York decided he really liked this young woman. She was just about his age, maybe a year or two younger. Her hair was crazy colored, she had wide set eyes and a rich full mouth under a straight nose. Sharp cheekbones blended well with a strong jaw line. As Master Chief Fugget said, she was skinny, although not exactly bony. She was more whipcord muscular, as if she didn’t allow any extra fat to accumulate anywhere. She was shorter than him, most women were.
“Motorcycles are the craziest things you ever saw. They’re just an engine and two wheels. Dad straddles the engine and balances on those two wheels. He and his buddies race around the roads at near enough to a hundred miles an hour. Well, Mom may be crazier. Her and her clutch sample their moonshine and shoot skeet while Dad and his gang rides hogs.”
York was baffled. While he understood most of the words, none of it seemed to make sense. He didn’t know what skeet was and why you would shoot it. He did know what moonshine was, after all New Hope had two moons, one large and one small enough it had no gravity of its own. One of the moons was in the sky every night. How would you sample it? He knew what hogs were, but riding livestock sounded crazier than riding the motorcycle thing, especially doing it at night under the moon.
Chrissie saw his confusion, “I guess y
ou do different things for fun where you come from.”
York nodded, “I’ve heard about having fun, but I don’t really have as much experience with it as you would expect.”
Chrissie winked at him. “Well, we’ll just have to do something about that. How about you and I climb into my rider and I’ll give you a ride?”
It sounded to York as if the offer for a ride was for more than a jaunt in her skyrider.
A voice behind them interrupted York’s response. “The hell you will.”
York spun around and stood face to face with a female junior grade lieutenant. He snapped to attention. “Ensign Junior Grade York August Sixteen, sir.”
“At ease, Ensign.” She looked at PO Altamont. “Chrissie, shag your ass back to work.”
“Aw, Sis.”
“Don’t ‘aw, sis’ me. Move it or I will cut it off, burn it, and bury it.” She looked York up and down. “Ensign Sixteen, I don’t like you regular navy types. I never met one who didn’t think he or she was god’s gift to the local talent. Even your fat-ass Commander Blaque thinks he’d be doing us a favor if we dropped our panties for him. So, you quit flirting with my detachment and keep your hands to yourself. I’ll be damned if I take any of my girls back pregnant by some fucknard who’ll be gone tomorrow.”
“Lieutenant …” York stammered. He was about to protest how he hadn’t been flirting, until he realized he really had been. He wasn’t as smooth as Bond, Chiroc or even the Austin Powers guy, but he had been trying to keep Chrissie talking. “Yes, sir. I apologize. My actions were indeed blatant fraternization.”
He looked carefully at the woman. This was Lieutenant Altamont, the commander of this reserve detachment. She wasn’t thin like her sister, not that there was any fat on her any more than there was on his holo trainers Gretchen or Aphrodite. However, she did have curves where her younger sister had none. Her hair was long and jet-black. York silently thanked the god’s she wasn’t a redhead. She would’ve been perfect if she was a redhead and being perfect would’ve been too much.
Lieutenant Altamont backing off a bit, “Well, maybe you weren’t blatant. The overt action part is what I want to make sure doesn’t happen. I can’t stop you two once Chrissie … um, Petty Officer Altamont, graduates from college, gets her degree and earns a commission next year, but until then, she, and every other thing walking on two legs is off limits to you. Got me, Ensign?”
“Yes, Lieutenant. I understand and I will comply. May I offer my assistance during your deployment aboard Em.T-Sp8s?”
“I’ve been coming up here twice a year since I was a raw recruit at fourteen. I know my way around better than you do. So, I don’t need to see you round and about. Make no mistake, Ensign Sixteen, if I catch you trying to get into any pretty panties, I’ll not wait for a court martial, I’ll castrate you faster than any two-month-old calf. You just stay out of our way and keep out of my sight.”
“Yes, sir.” He spun on his heels and marched out of the bay. He grinned when Master Chief Fugget winked at him on the way past. He wondered if he could find some way to be round and about, regardless of what Lieutenant Altamont said.
The past three months hadn’t been as hard as he expected them to be. York had decided at a very early age he didn’t like people in general. However, he knew he needed specific people in his life. He would go stark raving, foaming at the mouth, wet your pants insane if he spent much more time on this station without some human contact. There had always been people in his life. His earliest memories were living in the orphanage dormitory with children stacked in long rows three and four high. Even at the Yards, when he had a tiny private room in his final year, he was rarely alone except to sleep. The Yards filled his waking hours with classes, lectures, training and above all hazing and harassment. Hazing and harassment were human contact, just not always pleasant. All the same, contact was contact.
York was more than ready to admit he missed interacting with people. He missed Harp and Sadie Brown from the Gambion. He’d thought they were friends, yet once he was unable to attend their dinners, he never heard from them again. He hadn’t received any responses to his texts and emails to them. He tried to think back to other friends in the past, remembering his past had been lonely.
Now there were people on his station if he wanted to talk to someone. He certainly had to hang around long enough to find out the lieutenant’s first name.
ELEVEN
York grinned as he flashed his orders to Lieutenant Junior Grade Kenna Altamont. He was now the station liaison officer for all visiting reserve units. Accepting the role as a secondary duty gave him access to their roster with everyone’s names and biographies. Her name was at the top of the list as the detachment commander.
Kenna was a couple of months older than him. She was not old enough to give anyone’s excessively stuffy old grandmother apoplexy. He thought it amazing that even in this day and age many people still thought wives should be younger than their husbands. York wasn’t entertaining any thoughts of marriage. Honeymoon fantasies with Kenna, but not marriage, was entertaining enough. Every marriage fantasy ended in disaster from infidelity (hers, of course), military transfer (his) or death (certainly hers). He had nothing to offer in marriage. She outranked him and probably always would. He was convinced he would spend the rest of his military career in virtual obscurity as a junior grade ensign. She came from a large wealthy family, or wealthy by Liberty standards. He had his military pay and no family at all. She had civilian life prospects as a rancher, a business owner, or even moving into planetary government. He was stuck in this dead end job without hope of ever getting out, short of insanity or retirement.
In all of that, he had learned her first name. It gave him a little jolt of pleasure seeing her frustration and anger over his newly assigned duties. He didn’t know what a liaison officer did and obviously she didn’t either. The liaison officer additional duty had been signed off by Commander Paul with a specific note to ‘keep ‘em out of my hair’, ‘give ‘em whatever they want’, ‘keep your dick in your pants’, and most important of all to his way of thinking ‘meet with their commander daily for updates’.
Kenna said, “What the hell! We never needed a liaison officer before.”
York kept his grin. “Well, Lieutenant Altamont, I was never available before now.”
Kenna said, “My promise still stands if I catch you with any of my people.”
He showed her the note from Commander Paul. “See? Even my supervisor has warned me about such actions.”
Kenna grunted, “He actually wrote this? What kind of military command is this? ‘Keep your dick in your pants’?”
“Pretty much the same command you gave me minus the threat to castrate me, Lieutenant.”
“Um, yeah, I guess. Sorry about that, but I do mean it. Some of these kids aren’t sophisticated like you big city boys.”
York wanted to deny he was a big city boy. True he’d been born and raised in a big city, however he wasn’t sophisticated. He could dance. Cotillion was a required class at his military prep school, but he’d never taken a date to a dance. He knew which fork to use at the table. Etiquette was a required class at the orphanage, but he’d never taken a date out to dinner. He also could differentiate opera from rap. Music appreciation class was a required class at the Yards, but he’d never taken a woman to a concert. He knew about sex and sexual harassment. They’d been required classes everywhere, but he’d never even held a girl’s hand for anything other than a complicated judo hold or while wearing gloves in dance class.
Kenna said, “What kind of name is Sixteen anyway? Sixteen? Is that like the sixteenth lord of August Manor back on Richie Richland or wherever you come from?”
His budger past didn’t exactly embarrass York, yet, this was the first person he’d ever met who didn’t seem to know who he was. He wanted to duck the question, but the ingrained habit of honestly answering higher-ranking officer’s questions was insistent.
“No,
sir. My name is a date. It means the twenty-fifth of August in the sixteen year of this century. Y being the twenty-fifth letter of the alphabet, Y for York. It’s my birthday.”
“What the …? Your family has so many children they make up names to match their birth date?”
York felt his face turning red with embarrassment. “No, sir. I have no family. Sixteen is my birth date and the day I was turned over to the state run orphanage. If I was given a name by my mother, I never knew it or her.”
It was Kenna’s turn to look embarrassed. “Sorry, Ensign. I didn’t mean to pry into your personals.”
He wanted to tell her that he’d like to get a lot more personal. None of the classes he’d ever taken told him how to say such a thing smoothly. It also might, just might, border on sexual harassment. Instead, he said, “So, what can I do to liaison you?”
She looked thoughtful, tapped her front teeth with a well-manicured fingernail and ended up wrapping her lips around her finger making little sucking noises as she thought. The redness in York’s face returned. It had nothing to do with embarrassment … yet. He knew it would get embarrassing if she didn’t quit sucking on her finger soon.
She said, “I’ve got everyone bunked down in two warehouses. This one,” hooking a thumb over her shoulder, “and one down there.” She pointed a long way down the corridor where a group of men milled about. “I’d like them closer. I mean, not so close as to mix the sexes, all the same it would be nice to have them close enough to form up quicker.”
“Why are you bunking in warehouses?”
“Because those warehouses are unlocked and close to our duty area.”
York asked, “What are your duties?”
“We’re retrofitting an old freighter, a cattle hauler in its previous life. If we can get her running, we can use her for smuggler and slaver interdiction around Liberty.”
York nodded. “Master Chief Fugget said you had a problem with slavers, but he didn’t mention smugglers.”
