Off Rock

by Kieran Shea

  Jock Roscoe certainly was an oily one. Earlier in the canteen he’d intimated that trusting anyone, even someone like himself, was a bad idea. But seriously—what choice did Jimmy have? There was no way he could get any amount of gold off of Kardashev 7-A by himself. Jock’s connections and expertise were essential. With his shaky footing with The Chimeric Circle, it seemed that Jock was at least primed to take such a chance. Coming to his quarters was a good sign. Nevertheless, a sense of mild dread spread through Jimmy. If he gauged stealing the gold wasn’t worth the effort, Jock might choose to sell him out to Azoick’s higher-ups in order to shore up Jock’s own tenuous prospects. It was common knowledge that Azoick often awarded substantial bonuses to snitches, and while he didn’t know precisely how much Jock owed The CC, a whistleblower bonus might prove to be a better play for Jock.

  Jimmy then remembered the words spoken back in the canteen.

  With significant risks come big rewards…

  Damn right.

  Freeing the lock and opening the hatch, Jimmy greeted Jock and waved him inside. After locking the entry, he watched as Jock moseyed half the length of the room and looked around.

  “Lordy, hotter than a hog brazier in here, eh?”

  Jimmy shucked a thumb. “Fragmite incinerators. They’re just on the other side of the wall. Noisy and a bit on the smelly side from time to time, but the heat’s good for my terrariums.” He rubbed his chin. “Listen, man, I’m sorry to have to do this, but I’ve got to frisk you.”

  Jock looked at Jimmy as if he had just asked for a big, sloppy kiss.

  “You’ve got to do what?”

  “Hold up your arms.”

  Groaning, Jock rolled his eyes theatrically and then raised his skinny limbs out to the side. “Bloody hell. In all my years, some shale chipper looking for me to help him out, this has to be a first. God, what kind of Judas do you take me for, Jimmy? I make my side living on trust, and trust isn’t a one-way proposition, I’ll have you know.”

  Jimmy finished giving him a quick pat down. The fact was, Jimmy wasn’t looking for concealed weapons, as such things were forbidden under Azoick regulations and harder than hell to come by; he was searching for possible miniature recording devices. The reason for meeting still hadn’t been fully disclosed, and shrewd as he was, Jock might record their conversation to avoid future problems and maybe sell him out to Azoick for his own benefit. Truth was, Jimmy hadn’t a clue as to what kind of recording device he was looking for, but he made a big show of patting Jock down anyway. Stepping back and waving a hand, he apologized.

  “Sorry, man, but up until this point it’s your word against mine in all of this. Like it or not, you have a reputation for trafficking in opportunity. Take it as a compliment.”

  “Fair enough,” Jock replied.

  Jimmy gestured toward his bunk. “Have a seat.”

  Jock sauntered down the narrow room. He paused to examine the pictures tacked up on the wall, the naked blonde doppelgänger with the stomach wound in particular, and then sat on down on Jimmy’s bunk. Following him, Jimmy reached up to the shelf above his desk. Tucked behind his HMS Victory model he’d a bottle of single malt Scotch stored in an imitation green leather box. The box was sealed with a shiny silver clasp, and he reserved the Scotch for special occasions—something to help gild his reflections whenever he had a really bad day, like his birthday. Opening the case and looking at the bottle, Jimmy paused for a moment and marveled at the embossed age printed on its label.

  Fifty-seven.

  It was the same number as the shaft where he’d found the gold.

  Was it an omen?

  Jimmy didn’t believe in such things. Like horoscopes and organized religious flimflammery, he saw omens as nothing but interpretive, superstitious fantasies for knuckleheads who believed in enigmatic cogs beyond themselves. Good or bad, it was an amusing coincidence for sure, but seriously, an omen? C’mon.

  “Up for a taste?”

  Jock stared at the bottle in Jimmy’s hands. “Ooh, for a glass of that I’d unzip my jumper right now and be your Mary. Where’d you happen to score that bottle of happy? You rob a senator or something?”

  Jimmy shook his head and looked for a glass. “Actually, I picked this up on one of my extended leaves back home on Earth. I’d a delayed connection on Kaffeklubben Island in Greenland, and there was this major gale macking offshore that kept all of the outbound flights grounded. To kill time I cleaned out some tourists there to pay their respects at the Arctic battlegrounds. There was a duty-free shop.”

  “Poker?” Jock asked.

  “Nope. Bridge.”

  “Get out. Who plays bridge for stakes?”

  Jimmy bunched his shoulders and let them drop. Finding a glass, he removed the bottle’s stopper and poured two and a half fingers’ worth. “I guess I do. My parents liked to play when I was a kid, and they used to cajole me into sitting in when one of their regulars dropped out of their semi-weekly kitchen game. The tourists were up for some side bets on penalties, and anyway it worked out pretty well for my partner as well, so not too many feathers got ruffled. Cheers.”

  Jimmy handed the glass to Jock and put the bottle back in the case. He left the box open on his desk and after excusing himself he crossed and entered the unit’s bathroom. He removed a loosened panel in the wall and, balancing it on the edge of the sink, he then lifted out the radiation-proof tumbler with the gold sample from where he’d stored it earlier. Holding the container up so the chunk of gold could catch some light, he caught a glimpse of himself reflected in the tiny round mirror over the sink. It was strange, but Jimmy detected something different in his eyes. A spark of life perhaps had returned.

  Here goes nothing…

  Walking back out into the room, Jimmy casually tossed the tumbler onto the bunk next to Jock. The container bounced once on the mattress, rolled, and the gold inside tapped the tumbler’s dense glass with a sharp plink. In the midst of testing his single malt, Jock turned his head and looked at the tumbler. Close to a half a minute passed, and an impatient bubble threatened to burst from Jimmy’s chest.

  God, what’s taking him so long to respond?

  Jimmy hadn’t exactly rehearsed what he was going to do if Jock passed on the deal, but even with the station’s artificial gravity it was taking a mighty long time for the other shoe to drop.

  “Is that what I think it is?” Jock asked eventually.

  Jimmy nodded. “Yeah. I’m sorry, but by my showing you this you are now an accessory to a capital one corporate offense.”

  Jock looked at Jimmy sternly. Bending forward, he set his glass of Scotch down between his boots and then unfastened a cargo pocket on the leg of his jumper. After removing a red bandanna, he draped the bandanna over the top of the tumbler and lifted the sample. It was something to note, the cautionary measure so as to not leave fingerprints. Jock scrutinized the chunk.

  “You’ve tested this?”

  Jimmy said, “That I have.”

  “And?”

  “And it’s real. Non-auriferous gold with ninety-eight percent purity, more or less.”

  Jock snorted. “Piss and wind—ninety-eight percent?”

  “At troy weight. And there’s more.”

  “More?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Bugger all, where?”

  “Shaft site in the Kappa Quadrant,” Jimmy said. “I found a pocket when I was rigging the shaft for final closure.”

  “When was this?”

  “A few hours ago. I was out there solo and was nearly finished with my shift when something caught my eye. Anyway, the gold vein… it looks pretty substantial.”

  “Define pretty substantial.”

  “Well, I might be wrong, but I’ve seen pockets like this before. I estimate there’s at least fifty kilos down there.”

  “Fifty?”

  “Maybe. I didn’t have a portable CT scanner on me, but even if I did, there was no way I could’ve completed a full recess analysis bec
ause I needed to catch a surface tram to get back to base.” Jimmy skewed his head to one side. “So, what do you think?”

  Once again Jock was silent. He leaned over and set the tumbler back down on the bunk where Jimmy had tossed it, neatly folded his red bandanna, and stuffed it back in his cargo pocket. Taking his glass of Scotch from the floor between his legs, Jock rose and walked halfway back toward the hatch. Just then the fragmite incinerators beyond the wall kicked on with a dull rumble. Jock drained the rest of his drink in a single swallow and didn’t turn around.

  “You’ve some nerve exposing me to something like this,” he said.

  Life didn’t have rewind buttons, but Jimmy wished he had one because he couldn’t read the inflection of Jock’s words. Jimmy then remembered Jock’s earlier quip back in the canteen. Maybe his pickle-ace needed a little extra to spur his conspiratorial engine along. “Trust isn’t a one-way proposition, right?”

  Jock spun around. “No, it damn well is not! Good lord, Jimmy, have you any idea what the punishment for a capital one corporate offense like this is?”

  “Kind of.”

  “Kind of? Great, it’s settled then. You’re certifiably bonkers.”

  “No, I’m not,” Jimmy countered. “Right now, this is something I want to do and, honestly, it’s something I feel I have to do. And as of this second any scuttlebutt about this and it’s your word against mine, Jock. Except for me, no one has done anything yet. So if you tell me right here and now that it’s not worth it or possible, then fine. I’ll go next door and burn this gold and the tumbler up in the fragmite incinerators and we’ll forget any of this ever happened.”

  Jock peered at him intensely. “You’re really ready to do that?”

  “Hell, yes, I am.”

  “God, check out the swinging brass on you.”

  Jimmy folded his arms and waited.

  “All right, Mister Big-Shot Lawbreaker,” Jock said as he ambled toward him. “Let me tell you a story, all right? Once upon a time, I knew this bloke. A regular working-class stiff like you and me, but this bloke I knew—Donnie, let’s call him—he had more hard road ahead of him than behind. Suffice it to say this was back during my pre-Azoick days when me and Donnie were employed by the same off-world developer. In any case, Donnie got his mitts on a mess of pills seized by the company’s security bulls. Straight-up pharmaceuticals for the extended skip necrosis and aches, but after getting caught with his fingers up the company’s skirt Donnie had enough on him to tip him over into a capital one corporate offense. Do you know what happened to poor ol’ Donnie?”

  “He went to prison?”

  “No,” Jock answered sharply. “That bloke was sentenced to valence-bond trials with intracerebral vivisection. It was only after his body was shot to pieces they sent Donnie to prison. Somebody cut his throat his first day inside.”

  “I take it that means you’re not interested.”

  Jock puffed up indignantly and moved over to Jimmy’s desk. Grabbing the bottle of single malt from the box and biting the stopper, he poured himself a generous refill. When Jimmy stepped toward him, Jock spat out the cork and it bounced off Jimmy’s jumper like a cricket. Jock held out the glass and gesticulated for Jimmy to take it, and when he did Jock raised the bottle to his lips and did his best water cooler imitation. He lowered the bottle.

  “Coworker invites me back to his little hothouse domestic, pours me a swanky gargle and presents me with one of the most dangerous, possibly profitable propositions of my life—one that in all likelihood could get both of us seriously fucked—and he’s asking if I’m interested? God almighty, mate, I need to sit down.”

  Jimmy dragged out his desk chair, and Jock immediately dropped into it like a winded prizefighter. With care, Jimmy took the Scotch bottle from him and set it back down on the desk.

  Jock shrieked. “Jimmy, you crazy son of a bitch! This is fantastic! Do you know what the current market exchange rates for gold are?”

  “Yeah, I sort of checked.”

  “Oh, you sort of checked. Millions.”

  “If we don’t get caught,” Jimmy added soberly.

  “FIFTY BLOODY KILOS?”

  “Maybe you ought to keep your voice down.”

  Jock blew a curt raspberry. “Phfftt—get off that. Who comes down to this sweltering hole? No one except for you and those automated hover bins heading for the incinerators.” Jock faked a punch at Jimmy’s breadbasket. “You swine. Of course this is possible. It’s incomprehensibly dangerous, but something like this…it might be the mother of all capers. Fifty kilos? We’ll be wallowing in it, mate. Stinkin’ rich!”

  They exchanged fist bumps, and for the first time in hours Jimmy felt a thin sense of relief.

  After a gleeful sniggering fit and another lengthy draw on the bottle, Jock finally settled down. “Okay, let’s get down to the granularity of it, shall we? What kind of break are we talking about here?”

  “Break?”

  “Yeah, you know, break. Cut, split, my end of the take. You finding the honeypot and me handling all the logistics, a sixty-forty split would be aboveboard I reckon.”

  Jimmy was surprised he hadn’t thought about it before. Sixty-forty? But hold on—which way? With Jock’s unrestrained fervor Jimmy imagined an imbalance in a split could breed some resentment. Bitterness in any form was always problematical, but then again Jimmy estimated there was more than enough gold down the shaft for the both of them several times over. The thing was, Jimmy hadn’t even divined how he was going to get all that gold out of the shaft yet—not in the two meager shifts Leela sanctioned. Not only that, but with their deep-sixed romance Leela had also given off a major-league vibe earlier that Jimmy wasn’t exactly performing up to snuff. With her needle-sharp officiousness in her new managerial position, she might hawk Jimmy’s every move, or even possibly change her mind and give the demolition inlay assignment to those two Chinese nitwits. The entire scheme could get clipped at the knees before anything even got started. Jimmy’s head swam, but for now first things were first. The split.

  “Look,” he said, “my initial thought here is to be fair. As of now there’s a ton of headaches ahead for both of us, and any plan we come up with will have us sticking our necks out equally, if only in different capacities. That said, how do you feel about an even cut down the middle?”

  Jock’s jaw horse-collared. If he was having any second thoughts, they dissolved completely.

  “Half?”

  “Yeah.”

  Jock cackled. “Fuck a duck on a loading dock. I’m in, Jimmy. I’m in all the way.”

  They shook on it.

  Jimmy set down the glass Jock had given him and walked over to his bunk. Picking up the gold sample, he trekked back to the bathroom and concealed the tumbler carefully back behind the wall panel.

  Returning to the main room, he asked, “Okay, so what’s next?”

  “Well, hold on there, mastermind,” Jock said. “We need to put our thinking caps on. Believe me, without a solid strategy in all this we’re as good as caught. Best thing for something this bold is to keep things simple. Amateurs, they get showy. You start doing long math and carrying the nine, that’s when things go cockeyed. Let’s talk about how you’re going to get that much gold back to base unnoticed. It’s been forever and a day since I bounced around out there on the surface, so you know better what’s what about all that. So let’s have it and rip off the varnish for me. How much time do you think digging out all that gold will take you?”

  “Well, Fifty-Seven is the last site scheduled for demolition and seal.”

  “Right, so you said.”

  “And Leela wants me to finish up my inlays in my next two shifts.”

  An invisible curtain fell over Jock’s face. “Did you just say Leela?”

  “Yeah.”

  “As in Leela Pendergast?”

  “You know another?”

  “Oh, hell. Didn’t you two use to—”

  “Yeah, for like five min
utes, and I’ve been trying to live it down ever since.”

  “Don’t tell me that minky shrew is in on this as well.”

  Jimmy pulled a face. “Seriously?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe you two are still in cahoots, a little cheeky root on the side and all that. Got to say, I wouldn’t blame you. Downright boggled my mind when I learned you parted ways with that bird.”

  “Leela and I are over,” Jimmy assured him.

  “Okay, so you say. But isn’t Dickerson your regular supervisor?”

  “Dickerson is sick.”

  “So now your zealous ex-honeybunch is watching you on the heigh-ho, heigh-ho until he comes back?”

  “I know she can be difficult, but I can handle Leela.”

  Jock puffed his cheeks ruefully. “Hey, far be it from me to disparage your prowess as a cocksman and smooth operator, but that Sheila? She is one cold customer. If this tanks on your end or if she catches wind of what you’re up to, I’m telling you right now, I’ll deny knowing anything about all this to the slab.”

  “Okay.”

  Jock hoisted the bottle like a swami attempting to pull in a psychic read, and he tapped the bottle’s tip against his forehead. “All right then, take your time and walk me through your thinking.”

  Jimmy paced. He started freestyling through a morass of possible haul-out scenarios and drifted off into several non sequiturs about negligible gravity suction ratios, laser draws, and the like, but the more he talked the more it sounded like getting any gold out was going to be tougher than he thought. On top of extraction, Jimmy still had the rest of the inlays to affix and, he realized, if like before Leela kept a thumb on his biometrics, he’d have to work more efficiently than he ever had. When the fragmite incinerators beyond the wall suddenly cut off with a muted thunk, Jimmy struck on a half-boiled idea.

  “What if I did a back-to-back?”

  “Out there? Fifty-Seven isn’t exactly a long-distance shaft site, mate.”

  “I know, but if I take one of the crawlers and power through in one go I bet I could get all of the gold out in one pass. There’d definitely be less exposure back and forth. Not only that, but we won’t have to stockpile things piecemeal back here at base. When I was on site earlier I told Leela I was having some trouble mounting my demolition inlays. Maybe I could convince her I need to use one of the long drills to complete the job. With their greater piston capacity, long drills are absolute beasts and have, like, these huge packing cases. If I take a crawler, I bet I can cram fifty kilos into an empty long-drill case no problem. Leela is all about timelines. Scope creep is, like, her nemesis. I could say I wanted to do a back-to-back to get the job done fast and she’ll love that. She’ll admire my initiative.”