Off Rock

by Kieran Shea

  Jock stewed on it. “You really think she’ll go for a back-to-back? Back-to-backs require pre-approval. And taking crawlers and long drills without authorization? That’s chancy.”

  “I’ll just wing it and sell her on it when I’m out there.”

  “Easier to beg forgiveness than ask for permission, eh?”

  “Damn right.”

  Jock swished a mouthful of Scotch. “But fifty kilos isn’t like moving a small chunk, you know, especially when you get it back here to artificial gravity. You’re the surface specialist, so I can’t help you with the hard labor, understand? If I start mucking around in your stomping grounds, it’ll definitely look fishy.”

  “Yeah, but going back and forth and doing an extraction over two shifts, that’s worse, right? This will keep things simple. It’ll limit exposure to prying eyes.”

  “So what happens next when you get back? Have you thought about that?”

  “I can leave the drill case with the gold in the crawler. You oversee vehicle maintenance, don’t you?”

  “That I do.”

  “When I bring the crawler back to base you could take it from there. Like, say if there was a technical issue, you could arrange a maintenance inspection and grab the gold after I arrive. If everything goes south and I end up getting nailed, you could just walk away and I’ll say it was all my idea.”

  A wave of admiration played over Jock’s face. “That’s mighty large of you.”

  Jimmy raised a cautionary finger. “But once the crawler is back at vehicle maintenance the gold and the drill case will be your ball. If things go south after that, we’ll both go down together. Agreed?”

  Pouting, Jock nodded. “Agreed. You know, I think what we need on this job is a couple of sub-space scramblers to keep in touch while you’re out there. I’ve a pair.”

  “Sweet.”

  Jock sat back. Like a teacher at an invisible blackboard, he circled his fingers through the air, detached in a muddled bout of complicated thought. Then he clapped his hands together and proceeded to lay out his tentative ideas for his part of the scheme. Pausing only to take pulls of Scotch, he outlined how he’d front all the kickbacks at his own expense, saying that Jimmy could reimburse whatever outlays he made later on with a fifty-fifty hit, only to be fair. Jimmy liked how Jock expressed his disdain for free riders, and when Jock further elucidated how he’d shift the necessary bribes through a baffling composition of forward-exchange transfers to minimize any data trail, Jimmy was once again deeply impressed. Then again, he figured a man like Jock Roscoe wouldn’t have been able to manage his nefarious dealings all this time without mastering a few neat tricks.

  Jimmy listened as Jock went on at length, drawing a scandalous picture of how customs and interstellar shipping inspections actually worked. Like most, Jimmy believed procedural governance to be a scrupulously intensive praxis, but Jock assured him that was definitely not the case. A paper tiger is what Jock called it, an organizational clusterfuck that had so many loopholes and so many entities taking advantage of said loopholes that those in charge, to stave off profound embarrassment, concentrated their efforts in presenting a formidable façade. He told him that cargo didn’t really get evaluated or inspected until freighters returned to the Neptune Pact Orbital, and even then the oversight was minimal. The revelation was surprising to Jimmy, but Jock just laughed and said it was the way things always worked, time immemorial.

  “I suppose you never voted conservative,” Jock said.

  Jimmy shook his head. “So, when the gold gets back to home, what then? Do you have a safe place where we can divvy it all up?”

  “How’s that?”

  “The split. Do you have a safe place where we can divide up the gold?”

  Jock massaged his chin. “Oh, um, yeah. I’ve just the place. A trusted contact and everything. No worries.”

  “Where?”

  “Err-umm… Hong Kong.”

  “Hong Kong?”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Well, I’ve never been to Hong Kong.”

  Jock cackled. “Oh, once you get past all the polluted canals, slums, and leveled skyline parts of it are still quite lovely. As long as you pay liberally, my contact there doesn’t like to ask a lot of questions.”

  “So who’s your contact?”

  “Generally, I don’t like to divulge trade secrets, but since we’re partners now, I’ve a regular dragon lady back H-Kongy ways. A real piece of work. Goes by the name Min-Min.”

  “Min-Min?”

  “Yeah, Min-Min Ho. As a front, Min-Min operates a hostess club in what’s left of the Wan Chai district. After we make the skip back to the Neptune Pact Orbital, I’ll get word to Min-Min that the gold is on its way and then we’ll grab an inner-system shuttle home. I’m telling you, that Min-Min, I bet she’ll send a chauffeured stretch to fetch us and the cargo. Believe it or not, the little lady finds me irresistible.”

  Jimmy suppressed an urge to laugh.

  Jock Roscoe? Irresistible? Irresistible like what, genital warts?

  “It’s been quite a spell since I partied all lethal like in Hong Kong, I’ll tell you that much,” Jock added salaciously.

  Huh. It sounded too good to be true, and Jimmy wondered if maybe it was. No, he thought, the capital one corporate offense penalties were too severe. Not only that, but Jock had his debts to The Chimeric Circle to consider. The man was positively jazzed and was all business.

  “Okay, so what happens next?” asked Jimmy.

  “Well, with you planning on getting fired you’ll be on the next transport back, probably aboard the Adamant as she’s the last inbound freighter set to arrive. Me? I’ve a ninety-five-year-old auntie back home who’s in a frail way with her life-extensions, so I’ll put in for personal leave immediately with a claim that I’m the executor of her estate. We’ll both ride the Adamant for the skip to the Neptune Pact Orbital and from there we’ll coordinate a connecting inner-system shuttle back.”

  “So your aunt is really that bad off?”

  “Ha, that old bat. She’s been trying to outfox death for decades. She’s probably a goner already.”

  “I thought personal leave was kind of hard to get.”

  “You forget who you’re dealing with, Jimmy.”

  “Jock Roscoe the Great?”

  “The Great? I’m His Bloody Eminence as far as you’re concerned.”

  Exalted epithets aside, Jimmy knew he needed to mention something else, so he took a sip of Scotch to boost his nerves. “I suppose this is where you warn me against loose lips and double-crosses.”

  “Well, that’s assumed as hereafter it’s you and me alone on this, lock and key.” Jock pantomimed a locking motion in front of his mouth and then tossed an imaginary key over his shoulder. Jimmy repeated the gesture.

  Jock beamed. “I have to tell you, mate, my blood is up! Up! Up! Up! This load, it’ll be more than enough to square me with The CC a thousand times over.”

  “I’m glad.”

  Slugging Jimmy’s shoulder in the exact same spot Leela had earlier, Jock stood and turned to leave.

  “Wait, where are you going?” Jimmy asked.

  Bottle in hand, Jock freed the lock on the hatch. “Me? I’ve got to get percolatin’. There are a slew of specifics that need lining up. But you… you should get some rest. There’s heaps of work ahead, and you’ll need your wits about you. With that in mind, I’m taking this Scotch off of your hands to cement our partnership. Check in with me before you start your next shift, and I’ll give you the sub-space scrambler before you head out.”

  After Jock left, Jimmy sat down on his bunk and was at once exceedingly surprised at himself.

  Well, what do you know. It wasn’t that hard to pull a pin on an enormous grenade after all.

  7. THE CANDY MAN CAN

  Not long after he departed Jimmy’s quarters, and with a good deal more of the single malt splashing in his gut, Jock swerved gleefully across the cavernous expanse of t
he shipping hangar on an Azoick glide-scooter. Deep within the shelving units and labyrinthine storage areas he found Zaafer Daavi way up on a mechanized ladder.

  Jock hollered up. “There you are, son!”

  From atop the ladder and adjoining balustrade, Zaafer Daavi looked down and swapped a fizzing grape-flavored lollipop from one side of his mouth to the other. Jock set the brake on the glide-scooter as Zaafer drew the lollipop from his lips with a wet, pronounced schplock.

  “Oh, hello there, Mr. Roscoe.”

  “Come down here, son. I need a word.”

  Zaafer dithered. “Gee, I’d really like to come down and talk, sir, but I’m really very busy. I’ve been working straight through my cycle and there’s over nine more items still left on my checklist. No disrespect, sir, but is this something we could talk about later?”

  Jock looked up from the driver’s seat of the glide-scooter. Blemish-faced, gaunt, with a wispy fuzz of a beard, Zaafer plugged the lollipop back in his mouth and resumed futzing with his air-wrench. All around them, the sundry echoes of hydraulics and powerful freight equipment hissed, whumped, and boomed. Overhead like a dreary gull an imaging drone beeped and lingered lazily. Jock watched and waited as the imaging drone registered his presence and then whisked away.

  Typically Jock was tickled by the sedulous Pakistani tech’s pains at addressing him formally, but after his meeting with Jimmy he needed irksome excuses from the kid like he needed a deep snifter of broken wind.

  “It’ll only take a minute. C’mon. Be a good sport, young Davey.”

  Zaafer sighed. “Daah-vee.”

  “How’s that?”

  “I said, Daah-vee. Gosh, you always do that, sir. You always mispronounce my last name, is it so hard to remember?”

  Jock rubbed his forehead vigorously. “Just come down here, son.”

  Zaafer glanced downward once more and sucked fiercely on his lollipop. Jock noted a level of wariness seeping into the boy’s watery, dark eyes. Fully understanding how much Zaafer disliked it when he mangled his surname, Jock angled his head amiably, all the while thinking, Where is this little shit’s sense of bloody humor? He supposed that was how life doled out the talents. A whiz mechanic, Zaafer could overhaul plasma cloud stabilizers for a fusion drive, revamp a marcher lift, and troubleshoot even the most mindboggling of maintenance hiccups, but skylark around at his expense and the kid could snap pissy like a five-year-old brat.

  “You don’t even know what I want to talk to you about,” Jock said.

  A few more rachitic twists with his air-wrench and Zaafer finished whatever he was working on. He slipped the wrench into the waist loop on his jumper belt, fitted his boots into the stirrups on either side of the mechanized ladder, and rode the ladder’s stirrups all the way down.

  Jock took a brief swig of Scotch, jammed the bottle into a drink holder on the glide-scooter’s dash, and peeled himself off of the driver’s seat. Giving Zaafer his finest go at a smile, he then toddled behind the vehicle and retrieved a blue canvas bag and a radiation suit from the basket on the rear bumper.

  “Come with me…” he said, cupping Zaafer by the elbow.

  Jock knew it would take some luring with the boy so he promptly unslung the canvas bag from his shoulder. Zaafer kept describing all the other matters he needed to attend to as Jock waltzed him over to a pyramid of large, empty cargo containers.

  “Sir, I’m really quite busy. I’ve been working almost twelve hours straight, and the hard men over in sorting? They’re on a real tear. One of them told me if I didn’t fix the caterpillar braces by the next shift cycle, he’d track me down and shave off my beard.”

  Jock unzipped the canvas bag and held it open for Zaafer to see. Inside was a treasure trove of bribery specifically designed to wipe even the most pressing of concerns from the boy’s mind. When garnering favors from sources and collaborators, Jock understood that it was often critical to tap into the basest of tastes. Sometimes it took a while for him to figure out what these cravings were, as most people were somewhat chary about volunteering their most craven wants. Zaafer’s desires were almost laughable, but Jock kept his judgment of the boy in check.

  Zaafer Daavi was a sugar junkie.

  For a while now Jock had amassed a candy stash in his quarters to help lubricate things whenever he needed Zaafer, but with Jimmy’s discovery he felt he needed to ramp up his game. He made sure to fill the bag and to pack the kid’s greatest confectionery weaknesses right at the top, a jumbo package of Super Sour Waddlee Wees.

  Zaafer was stunned. “What’s all this?”

  “This? This is yours.”

  “Misha Allah—mine? Oh, my. It can’t be. Are those really Mookoomarsh Bars?”

  “That they are,” Jock replied with pride. “Twelve of the runniest, the most delectable Mookoomarsh Bars still available. Check out the wrappers, eh? Part of the limited run, the ones with the scratch-’n’-sniff packaging you can savor long after you’ve had your fill. Plus there’s four containers of Jupiter Caramels, those hard-to-get sparking taffy sticks I know you like, six boxes of Choco-Crunchy Gobblerz, and look right there crowning the whole mix, the classic: a nice, plump sack of Super Sour Waddlee Wees.”

  Zaafer crunched the rest of his lollipop. He coughed on the shards.

  “B-but how?”

  “Oh, you know, I’ve my ways.”

  “Mr. Roscoe, I know you have your ways, but this… this is unbelievable. This is more than you’ve ever brought me before. It’s like a whole candy shop.”

  Jock zipped up the bag and held it out. “Take it.”

  “What?”

  “Go on, take it. It’s yours.”

  Zaafer stepped back warily. “But, Mr. Roscoe, I haven’t done anything for you yet.”

  “Oh, but I’m certain you will.”

  “But all this? Really? For me? Goodness… what’s the catch?”

  “Catch?”

  “Um, well, you know there’s always a catch with you, Mr. Roscoe.”

  “Aw, now you’re making me feel bad.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you, Mr. Roscoe,” said Zaafer quickly, “but it’s just that this, well, all this… it’s, it’s—”

  “It’s what?”

  “Well, it’s a lot.”

  “That it be. And I reckon when you’re through doing what I need you’ll enjoy the second bag of goodies I have for you even more.”

  Zaafer blinked rapidly. “I’m sorry, but I don’t think I understand.”

  Taking deliberate care to mold his next words, Jock placed a hand on the boy’s lean shoulder and gave a light squeeze. God, Jock thought, for all the empty calories the kid consumed on a regular basis, the brown-skinned runt was practically skin and bones. He wrapped Zaafer’s arms around the bag.

  “Yeah, son, in commercial parlance this is what’s known as tendering an advance, a mere taste. I’ve a whole other duffle full of sweet stuff when you do what I ask.”

  Zaafer clutched the bag to his chest. Delving a hand inside he lifted out one of the Mookoomarsh Bars and his face was overcome with such awe one might think he held a prized ruby. Visibly timorous, Zaafer glanced around and started to hand back the bag.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Roscoe, but I… I can’t take this.”

  “What do you mean you can’t?”

  Zaafer looked down. “I’m sorry.”

  “God, son, stop saying you’re sorry all the time. Saying you’re sorry all the time is for losers, didn’t anyone ever have the good sense to teach you that? And you, my boy, you are not a loser, not by a long stretch. You and me, we’ve worked out our little agreements before, haven’t we?”

  “That we have, sir.”

  “And in all those times have I ever jammed you up or let you down?”

  “No, sir. Never, Mr. Roscoe. Not once.”

  “That’s right, not once. But let’s not dwell on our fine history. We need to be quick about this before that imaging drone swings back.”

&nbs
p; Zaafer’s eyes darted up to the shipping hangar’s ceiling. “Oh, I don’t believe the imaging drone will be back this way for a while, sir.”

  “Huh?”

  “Yes, I’ve been watching it, Mr. Roscoe. There seems to have been a change in the sweep patterns and it appears to be on fifteen-minute cycles. I guess back here among the empty cargo containers is not an important scanning area.”

  Jock was already well aware that the area wasn’t an important scanning locale. He was the one who’d adjusted the sweep pattern himself immediately after he met with Jimmy in his quarters. It was all part of the plan. Now all Jock needed to do was to get the cavity-ravaged young boy to do his bidding.

  “See, that’s what I like about you, kid. Always the sharpie. Now, then, to the reason for all the sweets. I need to get something off Kardashev 7-A for a friend of mine. Altogether it’s something bigger than the usual stuff we’ve arranged for, but don’t worry, I’ve an idea how to get all that bundled up. The thing is, eventually we’ll need to get the whole lot of it back to Earth, en masse. Right now, for your protection, it’s probably best if you don’t know all the nitty-gritty specifics.”

  “Oh, okay. I understand. Sure, sure. So, um, how much?”

  “All in all it looks to be about fifty kilos.”

  Zaafer went still. Jock noticed that a light sheen of sweat had appeared on the boy’s forehead and his now decapitated lollipop quivered on his lower lip like a cowpoke’s cigarette.

  “Fifty kilos?!”

  “Pipe down, man…”

  “Oh, no,” Zaafer balked. “Oh, no, sir. That’s not possible. By the Prophet, peace be upon him, fifty?”