Slim flashed her a huge smile in the rearview mirror. “You’re not mad?”
“Mad? Oh, no.” She laughed. “Now, Great-gramma Mad Dog, she probably would have been mad as hell. But me? I’m sweet as a little angel.”
Paul snorted. “Give me a break, eh.”
Mags patted him on the shoulder, too. “You know what, Paul? You’re alright in my book. Thanks for saving our arses back there. You still want to do business?”
“As long as you promise not to set any more rendezvous points on fucking fire, I might be open to it!”
“Darling,” she said, tearing open one of the boxes in the back of the van, “I’m going to set the whole damn world on fire.” She ripped open a carton, then a pack, and pulled out two cigarettes. “Care to join me?”
★ ○•♥•○ ★
“And that was pretty much the end of it,” she said. “We got out before anyone showed up. Paulie hooked us up with some fresh wheels in exchange for the smokes, and we went out the way we came.”
Plutonian sat with her aboard the Queen Anne. “And that was your western route?”
“Things were kind of hot in that neck of the woods for a while, what with a gang slaughter and arson and all. But Slim was right about his dad wanting to lay a foundation. Paul ended up being the perfect connection. He went all-in on establishing a new crew to handle our ‘liberated’ cargo through the ports, not just over land.”
“Ching wasn’t mad at you for getting his boy in trouble?”
“Hahaha! Let’s say he wasn’t thrilled about that part, but we ended up solving a major situation for him. We cleared out some traitorous scumbags! And he was taking care of business back in Chinatown, too. Old man Ching may have been a gentleman, but when it came to wiping out that rival gang, he made bloody sure he had a solid grip on the town by the time it was all over. He even had me keep Slim out of town a little while longer until he was finished—cleaning up.”
“What did you two do, hang out on the beach?”
“Oh, that’s another story entirely. I’ll tell you all about it someday.” Mags smiled and stood up. “So, do you want to see some more stuff in the armory?”
“Does it all have as much history as the Benellis?”
“Mister DJ, it’s all got history.”
“Lead the way.”
Asteroid Underground Interview:
Slim
Slim, Welcome to the Asteroid Underground.
Thanks, buddy. Glad to be here. You don’t mind, do you?
Oh, no. Go right ahead. That smells great! What is it?
Kung Pao chicken. Well, a vegetarian version. We make it with seitan. It’s less traumatic for the chickens that way. Here. Try some. You don’t have a peanut allergy, do you? Okay, try this.
Wow, that’s tasty. Do you make all your own food at Below the Belt?
Oh, yeah. Our customers don’t just come for the loud music and sexy dancers, hahaha. We’re the only place outside the Martian Warehousing Zone where a miner can get a home-cooked meal.
Tell us how you got started cooking.
Oh, I don’t even recall when I started. I worked in Dad’s restaurant ever since I can remember.
Your dad was in the restaurant business, too?
No, no, hahaha. Dad was in the gambling business. Or more accurately, Dad was the gambling business in Chinatown. The restaurant was just a cover. A meeting place, a decent way to launder money, that kind of thing. Once he moved into imports and exports, it wasn’t so important, but we kept it open a few more years anyway. I don’t know if it was so he could always get a home-cooked meal, or if he just thought it would keep me out of trouble! Maybe both.
Does Meteor Mags still dance at Below the Belt?
No, though we’d love to have her back. She mostly dances at her own place now. When she has the time.
Is it because of the shootout?
Hahaha, no. Well, maybe just a little bit. Don’t print that, though. Mags is persona non grata with the MFA, the Port Authority, and just about everybody else these days. So, it’s probably not a good idea for her to be in a little club like mine. She has to be more careful about hanging out now. We all miss her, though. She’s quite the dancer.
And you’ve known her a long time, too, haven’t you?
Oh, forever. Since Pearl Jam’s first album came out, anyway. I remember because she played the living hell out of the damn thing! Oh, I couldn’t listen to that album for a couple years after that.
So, 1991?
That’s right. Ah, I was just a kid back then. Good times. We still chat, of course. She’s got a new project in the works and, I don’t mind telling you, the math is pretty tough on it. I help where I can. Sometimes it just helps to have two minds working on the same problem.
A new project? What is she working on?
I can’t really give you the details. But I think it could be the most important thing since the GravGens, if we can get it to work. Revolutionizing life in the Belt, that’s about all I can say. And you know how Auntie Mags loves a good revolution.
She sure does. Thank you for joining us, Slim. Anything else you’d like to say before we go?
Yes! Come out to Below the Belt! We always have a good time, the dancers are always beautiful, and the meals are always cooked fresh to order! See you there.
8
Red Metal at Dawn
The attention of our readers is now to be directed to the history of two female pirates—a history which is chiefly remarkable from the extraordinary circumstance of the softer sex assuming a character peculiarly distinguished for every vice that can disgrace humanity, and at the same time for the exertion of the most daring, though brutal, courage.
—Charles Ellms; The Pirates' Own Book, 1837.
PART ONE: THE LABYRINTH
October 2029.
The asteroid known as Vesta 4 hurtled through yet another black orbit around the sun. In its relatively brief life of one billion years, it had more or less resigned itself to being caught in this orbit around the yellow star. Some centuries, Vesta 4 almost enjoyed itself.
But things had become more exciting lately. At the highest point on the rim of the massive crater at Vesta 4’s south pole, there now stood a building filled with wondrous lights and sounds. The sign on the building read “Club Assteroid,” but Vesta 4 did not appreciate the humor in that.
It did, however, enjoy the hustle and bustle. People came and went—all kinds of people. Vesta 4 had become so enthralled with their activities it hardly noticed when the woman with the tail renamed it from 4 Vesta. “It just sounds better that way,” she exclaimed in one of her moods. “To hell with what the charts say!”
If you dropped a rock from Club Assteroid’s lofty perch on the rim, it would fall thirty-one kilometers to the bottom of the crater. Only a few orbits ago, the rock would hardly have fallen at all. Vesta 4 had never been the gravitational equal of the only larger asteroid in the Belt, Ceres. And neither could approach Earth’s moon in terms of gravity.
But now, buried at the base of the enormous mountain in the crater’s basin, GravGens pumped out an Earth-like gravity. Thanks to the artificial gravity, Vesta 4 now held its very own atmosphere. This pleased it.
On nights when the parties on the rim grew exceptionally bright and loud, Vesta 4 felt a small tickle as a second set of GravGens kicked on. Club Assteroid housed the second set, which could lessen the gravity inside the club with the turn of a dial. Vesta 4, made of mostly rock, lacked the biology to appreciate the sensual effects this had on dancing bodies.
Tonight, however, no party raged in that strange building on the rim of the crater that held the tallest mountain in the solar system. Tonight, only a soft glow emanated from some of the windows. Faintly at first, but then stronger, came the sound of a single piano.
Meteor Mags sang softly. Her hands moved over the piano keys, falling on them like rain drops. Her voice floated above the chords like a borealis, shimmering in the darkness. Tonight, she
felt like singing Trains by Porcupine Tree.
Celina stood outside the entrance to the small concert hall in this wing of the club. Closer to the living quarters of Mags, Celina, and all the women of the club, the concert hall provided a space for their private gatherings away from the rowdiness. In the few years since they built this club, Celina had listened many times to her friend playing solo after everyone else had gone to sleep.
On these nights, Mags kept the concert hall completely dark except for a single candle. She would sit at the piano on the stage in the small band shell in the room, playing sometimes for a few verses, sometimes for hours.
Mags hit the high notes like they were written for her. The piano grew louder, like thunder on the edge of billowing clouds. Celina felt an ache in her heart she could not explain, a longing. Then a hand slid into hers and held it.
Hyo-Sonn stood beside her quietly. The young woman raised her eyebrows in a silent question. Celina nodded.
Mags’ voice filled the room and spilled into the hallway. Hyo-Sonn felt it, too: the longing, the ache, like reaching through the night for something she knew she could never touch.
Hyo-Sonn whispered, “Is Mags okay?”
Celina smiled again, the wetness in her eyes showing sparkles from the candlelight. “She’s okay, sweetie” she whispered. “Ever since I’ve known her, Mags just has nights like this sometimes.” Celina remembered. “She wakes up in the middle of the night and doesn’t want to talk at all. But she will go the piano and…”
Hyo-Sonn hadn’t known Celina very long, only a few weeks, but she knew she had never met anyone like her before. “And what?”
“I think she has dreams sometimes that make her sad, and this is just how she works it out. Then the next day, she’s fine. Like nothing happened.”
“What does she dream about?”
Mags announced, “I can hear you two out there, you know!”
Hyo-Sonn looked mortified. Celina just chuckled. She called out, “No getting anything past those little ears of yours, wagtail!”
Mags jumped down from the stage. She wiped her eyes with the soft suede of her gloves then strolled up to Hyo-Sonn. She placed her hand on the side of the young woman’s head, mussing her hair slightly. “You two are about as sneaky as a herd of elephants.” She kissed Celina on the cheek.
“Sorry, Mags. I was just worried about you.”
“Don’t worry about me, dear.” The smuggler placed her hand on the young woman’s cheek. “I’ll be just fine.”
Hyo-Sonn laughed. “Hmmm, why does that sound familiar?”
“What?” Mags feigned shock. “I was fine that time! Hahaha!”
“What are you two going on about?”
“Inside joke.” Mags’ belly shook as she laughed. She put her arm around Celina and squeezed. “Do you remember that night we showed up with Hyo-Sonn and the new girls?”
“Dear lord, how could I forget? It’s impossible to get a night’s sleep around here sometimes!”
“Let me tell you,” said Mags. “When we were on that ship…”
Then she told the story, with Hyo-Sonn interjecting here and there. Mags did have a tendency to exaggerate, after all.
Below them, Vesta 4 listened quietly as it spun through the Belt. It too, remembered that night. Stone never forgets.
★ ○•♥•○ ★
September 2029: Uncharted Asteroid.
Meteor Mags took her wire cutters and snipped through a few centimeters of the mesh barricade. She worked the tip of her saw into the opening. After drawing it back towards her a few times to start a groove, she sawed back and forth as fast as she could.
“That’s going to take all day,” said Tarzi. “Why don’t you just torch it with your pistol?”
“Save your charge in case we really need it. Here.” She pulled a smaller, foldable saw out of her kit, a tool bag on her belt. “Start on the other side.”
Tarzi unfolded the saw and got to work. “Why would anyone make a mesh gate, anyway?”
She wiped a little sweat from her forehead with the back of her arm. “Do you know what a Faraday cage is? It’s like a box you sit inside. The outside of the box distributes electrical charge evenly across the surface.”
“Why would you sit in it?”
“You’re safe from the current there. See, it isn’t voltage that kills you. It’s the amps. The current.” She leisurely chomped a piece of bubble gum while she sawed. “So anyway, the box distributes the charge evenly across the surface. Since there’s no difference in charge, you have zero voltage. And without any voltage, there’s no flow of—Tarzi, are you even listening?”
“Um, not really. Can we just use the torch on this stuff?”
Mags laughed. “Whistle while you work! We’ll be through in no time.” She sang the chorus to Breaking into Heaven.
“Since when were you a Stone Roses fan? That band is so weak.”
“Shut up! They had some great jams. Just because you weren’t around in ’89 to really appreciate what it was—”
“Oh yes, 1989. What a great year for humanity. Thatcher. Reagan. The—”
“Hey, it didn’t all suck. We kind of had a baby Internet back then. And Nirvana’s first album.” She sighed nostalgically then went back to singing.
Patches watched her friends through half-closed eyes. She sniffed the air. Patches smelled fish, or things like fish. Fishlike creatures for which she had no name. She could only imagine.
She wondered if Mags could smell it, too. Patches wondered a lot of things lately. Something felt different after she woke up in that strange machine. She turned her head to lick a tuft on her shoulder.
“Patches loves it here! Listen to her little motor go.” Mags peered over the rims of her glasses and smiled. “It’s weird,” she said, sawing away. “She doesn’t even need her helmet anymore when we go outside.”
“She doesn’t catch on fire, either.”
“What?!” Mags stopped sawing to glare at him. “Did you try to light my cat on fire?”
“It was her idea,” Tarzi laughed. “Seriously. Check her chat history.”
“Whatever. Don’t you two come up with any more experiments!”
“So,” he offered. “We’re sawing through a Faraday cage?”
“Well, no. This is like the mesh version of that. You take a bunch of screens and layer them. The only holes in the resulting mesh are smaller than the wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum. In other words—”
“In other words, the holes are too small to get the juice through, and so you’re safe on the other side?”
“Precisely! You’re pretty smart sometimes.” She kept sawing. “I’m guessing this mesh extends all the way around the laboratory. It wouldn’t make any sense to electro-shield the front door and not the whole thing.”
Tarzi sawed away at the mesh with a bored look on his face. He frowned. “So whatever is inside the mesh is safe from an electrical storm? Just how many electrical storms do you think they get on a little asteroid like this?”
“I was wondering the same thing myself. And my guess is: not many. So maybe—” She ripped away the remaining mesh on her vertical cut, down to the ground. Then she started sawing horizontally, just below eye level, cutting to where Tarzi had started a meter to her left.
“So maybe there’s something else on this asteroid besides a storm.”
“Maybe.”
“But what?”
Mags smiled and kept sawing. “Let’s hope we don’t find out.”
★ ○•♥•○ ★
Two Days Earlier, on Earth.
“Hey little man. R U ready 2 Rock? The revolution calls.”
Tarzi heard the gentle chime. He picked up his tablet. It felt weird when it talked out loud to him, interrupting his train of thought. He kept it on text-only most of the time.
“Right now?” He typed on the screen. “Kind of busy.”
The MM icon showed orbiting stars as she typed, “Wrap it up dear LOL y
ou do NOT want to miss this.”
He wasn’t actually doing anything at all, but she didn’t need to know that. “Don’t blame me for what happens then. Usual place?”
“Will be waiting xoxoxox ~M.”
Tarzi stood up, tossed the tablet in his open back pack, and pulled the zipper shut. “Attention, house. Let me out and lock it down.”
The voice command in his parents’ house obligingly opened the side door into the yard. Tarzi swept up his backpack from the couch. He had dressed hours ago, hoping for this call. He stood in the side yard just long enough to watch the house lock itself down. Windows and doors clicked their locks into place.
He pressed his earbuds in and pulled up a playlist. It would take him thirty minutes to walk the trails to the dam. A low, growling buzz filled his ears, then the hammering beats of something being smashed into tiny pieces. A droning guitar bashed his eardrums. He smiled peacefully and disappeared into the forest behind the house.
When he reached the edge of the clearing where the Queen Anne had landed, he looked through the trees with amusement. Mags had set out her portable “stage,” a piece of plywood in the grass where she danced.
She wore her favorite headphones. Unlike Tarzi, she didn’t care for ear buds. She liked old-school gear, with big puffy enclosures around the speakers and an adjustable band across the top of her head.
Mags might have liked the old-school look, but she loved having several hundred terabytes of music running on phantom wireless power in her ears. Tarzi had listened to her arguments about the portable Gramophone and Victrola cabinets from the early twentieth century. “The only way to listen to tunes totally off the grid,” she called them. But he knew she loved her massive music library more.
Meteor Mags: Omnibus Edition Page 18
