by Stephen Hunt
‘Give me some hope here, Skrat. Toss the skipper a bone. At least tell me they haven’t rescinded their open weapons policy on the station?’
‘Rather the contrary, they are currently insisting that all ship crews enter the station board armed. It seems there is a disturbing new trend in gang violence . . . since we last visited, a youth subculture has emerged called “monking”. Gangs are roaming the station sporting habits, tonsures and speaking tape-learnt Latin. That’s an ancient human language.’
‘So I recall, Skrat. I am human, you know.’
‘I forget, skipper. Quite frequently, you act so relatively reasonably that I often think of you as skirl with an unfortunate scale deficiency about your skin.’
In the navigator’s chair, Polter rose up to hover off Lana’s side. ‘Did I hear you correctly? There are gangs masquerading as servants of God and offering violence to honest citizens? This is blasphemy!’
‘The little scamps are only speaking Latin to mess with their parents and cut their folks out of the street jive,’ said Lana. ‘Latin was the original Lingual. Maybe they’re being ironic.’
Skrat shook his head, sadly. ‘If there was a significant skirl population at Transference there would be order and discipline here.’
‘A place for everyone and everyone in their place?’ smiled Lana. Maybe that’s why there were so many interlocking pyramids of hierarchy in skirl society, layers upon layer piled on top of each other like social landfill. Everyone got a position and a title and someone to boss around below them. Even the skirls at the bottom of the heap had dirt-cheap robots to abuse. Lana glanced at the image of Transference Station on the screen, the globe-girdling structure reduced to an engineer’s blueprint, a 3D model of the station rotating around the blue-green orb of the world of Transference itself. Just looking at the station, you knew that this was the oldest trading hub in Edge – that glorious crescent of independent space hugging the alliance like a cracked leather money belt around a tourist’s paunch. A little more shaved off the fat each year, but what the hell.
Unlike some of the Gravity Rose’s more recent layovers, the world didn’t feature a comet-sized spinning top as its space station, nor a ten mile-long O’Neill cylinder, nor that station classic – a multi-tiered donut of linked wheels spinning to simulate gravity on the cheap. No, Transference Station was a band circling the world below as if it was one of Saturn’s rings cast solid in steel, plastic, glass and shining ceramic composite; arms extending off the habitat like ribs from a whale’s carcass. There were purportedly more people living on the station now than the world below. Lana could imagine that one day in the future, her descendants would arrive here on the Gravity Rose and the station’s structure would have completely enveloped the planet, only a few patches of world left visible through gaps in the station’s exterior. The planet plunged into perpetual darkness by their trading station’s success. With this many people in orbit, you weren’t dealing with a commercial operation any more. You were dealing with a culture. And much like the cultures Lana found growing in the bottom of her abandoned coffee cups, dealing with it was always going to leave her feeling queasy.
‘It seems that our approach has been noted, old girl. We have an e-mail from Dollar-sign Dillard,’ said Skrat. ‘He’s offering to pay our docking fees if we mate at port nine-two-thirty and hear out a proposal he has to make.’
Lana frowned. That is a far better neighbourhood than we can afford to dock at on our own; but I’d been hoping for a legit job. ‘Dollar-sign Dillard. Haven’t we got any offers from upright brokers? How about the Hansard Combine? They’ve always got a cattle run or two out to some shiny new colony world.’
‘It appears not this time around.’
‘We’ve got a reputation, Skrat. We’ve got a reputation here, as well as a ship.’
‘I warned you,’ said Skrat. ‘Economies of scale. Have a look at the station’s docked vessel list. Since our last visit here, another seven per cent of ships listed as independents are now re-flagged as flying for corporate houses. Skippers are still selling out. Cutting their losses before there’s a freight monopoly in operation so tight they could earn more funds selling their ship to an aerospace museum.’
‘This is my ship and this is all I know how to do. All I want to do.’
‘There will come a time…’ warned Skrat.
‘To hell with that,’ said Lana. She jabbed a finger towards the coin-shaped world suspended against the night. ‘If the Edge isn’t in that direction anymore, then it lies behind our stern. Not every system wants to join the alliance.’
‘I’m a little old to become a deep space explorer,’ noted her lizard-snouted first mate. ‘Or, indeed, a colonist.’
‘So, docking fees paid, just for a face-to-face with DSD. What does that tell us?’
‘Possibly, that I should keep on searching the local data sphere’s “starship haulage wanted” section,’ said Skrat.
‘Money,’ said Lana. ‘Serious money being dangled in front of us. Come on, nobody loves money more than a skirl . . .’
‘You’re an ape-evolved racist. This is one skirl who enjoys living as much as he does social advancement.’
‘Living free, Skrat. Living free.’
‘Dollar-sign Dillard has lived a long time,’ noted Polter. ‘Surely the will of the Devine had seeped into his bones over the centuries. Perhaps in this matter, he is a tool of God’s volition?’
‘There’s not much bone-mass left in DSD’s body,’ said Lana. ‘Zeno’s lived a lot longer than our slimy broker buddy . . . and how divinely do you see our android acting?’ Will of the devine. Shizzle.
CHAPTER TWO
— Top Cats —
With the Gravity Rose clamped to a spur off Transference Station’s central ring – just one of dozens of docked starships visible – Lana waited as the station passenger arm extended towards their airlock. It was always deathly silent inside her airlock. The sounds of the vessel sealed behind her, the noise of station life still walled off by vacuum. Polter, Skrat and Zeno waited alongside her. On many worlds, a man-sized crab, a humanoid lizard and a golden-skinned android with a wiry Afro might draw a few stares. Where we’re heading today, we’ll pass as thoroughly pedestrian. A whir sounded from the heavy door behind Lana. It slid open and Calder Durk joined them. He still looked like a greenhorn in his ship overalls, as worn as the pass-me-downs had been made by their previous occupant. Well, a month of sim episodes and tape learning couldn’t make up for the man’s first twenty years of life stranded on a medieval hellhole of a world. Calder was a rescue cat, a favour, an exile. But there was a little bit of that in all of Lana’s crew. Maybe that was why Lana had acquiesced quite so readily to that conniving dirt-sucker Matobo’s request for her to rescue the barbarian prince from pot-roasting by his political enemies.
‘Mister Durk,’ said Lana. ‘I presume from the fact you’re standing here on your lonesome that you couldn’t inveigle the chief out of the drive rooms for a spot of shore leave?’
‘He laughed every time I mentioned the word Transference Station, captain.’
There was a little too much naval bearing about Calder for her taste now. Lana could see that the new boy was resisting the urge to salute every time he saw her; the hesitancy in his voice from choking off a “Sir, yes sir!”, each time he spoke. But she could blame that on Zeno; the android getting their new recruit fixed on sim shows like Hell Fleet and all. The Gravity Rose wasn’t a jump carrier or a missile ship, and apart from the chief, none of her crew had ever been career fleet. That was a deliberate choice on Lana’s part. There were always ex-military types looking for work across the civilized worlds, but they were too buttoned-up for the relatively casual regime she ran on board her vessel. Be honest with yourself, girl. Too honest for some of the dicey trade you have to sign on for, as well.
‘Don’t take it too personally, Mister Durk. The chief wouldn’t leave the engine room even if we were orbiting his home world.’
‘That’s an act,’ said Lana. ‘The chief was born on Quin Hon.’ She pointed Calder’s empty waist out to Skrat. ‘Get the man dressed.’
Her first mate placed a scaly hand on the weapon locker plate and the bin swung open as it recognized his biometrics. Skrat pulled out a rail pistol attached to a tangle of black webbing and tossed it at Calder – a twin of the gun the rest of the crew wore for shore leave. Well, not Polter, but with those vestigial fighting claws tucked on top of his carapace, Polter could cut his way through a steel deck if he had a mind to. A five-foot tall amphibious tank wasn’t something most humans took it into their mind to anger. You didn’t have to have been nipped by their nearest Earth analogue – a crab – to show the Kaggen race a healthy measure of respect.
‘There’s only one rule, Mister Durk,’ said Lana, watching Calder finger the malevolent, icy cold slab of weaponized ceramic, green light from its magazine readout pulsing across his palm to indicate a full charge and a hundred shot magazine. ‘You draw it, you better be prepared to kill someone with it.’
Calder grunted and pulled the straps tight around his waist and leg, clipping the holster in place.
‘We can buy you a longsword if you prefer to go sixth century on us.’
‘A longsword is two-handed,’ said Calder. ‘I was trained on a falchion. Shorter by seven inches.’
‘Shizzle, boy, there’s a job for you as a sim consultant if they ever revive the Conan franchise,’ said Zeno.
‘Feel free to ignore him,’ said Lana, arching an eyebrow in the direction of the ship’s android. ‘The broker we’re going to see is a media geek. Zeno here is just getting himself in the zone.’
‘Dollar-sign Dillard is the only chap within a hundred parsecs who actually cares that Zeno played Lando Calrissian’s grandson in the remake of Galaxy Wars,’ noted Skrat, dryly.
The android’s wiry Afro bristled in indignation. ‘It was the reboot of the remake of the Star Wars Golden Republic TV series, you skirl heathen. And if your species hadn’t got lucky by buddying up with humanity, you’d still think Noh Theatre was state-of-the-art entertainment.’ The android formed his hands together and threw the shadow of a rabbit on the wall, wiggling the animal’s ears under the bright airlock light. ‘Hey, look, viewers, I’m a mighty skirl sand baron, and my nest is entangled in an indecipherable political turf war with a lower hierarchically-placed nest.’
Skrat’s tail swished angrily behind him. It sounded a lot like a fencer testing the air with a foil before a duel. ‘Dear boy, I think we can safely classify sim addiction as cultural pollution, rather than an actual art form.’
‘Play nicely, boys,’ ordered Lana. ‘Or you can spend your shore leave with the chief inside one of his reactors, sponging down the anti-matter injectors.’ She saw the look on Calder’s face. ‘Just a little horseplay, your highness. We’re every bit as tight as a Triple Alliance carrier on board the Rose.’
‘Yes, I can tell.’
That’s the trouble with civilizing a barbarian nobleman with Zeno’s selection of sim episodes and tape learning… you never get your facts in the round; too many of the subtleties whistle straight over your head. ‘Finding sentients whose chain you can actually jerk is a rare and precious thing in this universe,’ said Lana. ‘Not everyone has a sense of humour you can understand.’ Lana tapped Polter’s elaborately tattooed carapace. ‘With the kaggenish, humanity also shares its belief in the one true God and the hope that we can be better than we are. That and the fact that kaggens inexplicably find humanity as cute as we think we are.’
‘You mean there’s only one god?’ said Calder, but Lana ignored him.
‘Our affection for your species is not inexplicable, revered captain,’ said Polter. ‘You are just like a pet tree monkey, only larger.’
Lana ignored her navigator, too. ‘And with the skirls we share a love of money, and, given our relative propensities for violence, some would say the taste for a good war as well.’
‘At least when we fight now, dear girl, we’re on the same side,’ said Skrat.
‘And what bang-up truths does humanity share with my kind?’ asked Zeno.
‘The copyright on your design and a healthy master-servant relationship?’ suggested Lana, only largely in jest.
‘Shizzle, I guess that’s why you call them human rights.’
‘You’re always as a good as human to me,’ said Lana.
‘Now you’re just being nasty,’ said the android.
Lana watched the docking arm draw close to them, less than ten feet away and slowing to mate with the Gravity Rose. An accordion-like passage of reinforced grey plastic, the arm was cheap, functional tech, but worlds rarely got rich by building better. ‘So, Skrat and me will go and visit DSD and find out what he’s got that’s so hot he’s willing to stake our docking fees up front. Polter, I take it you’re off to the local cathedral?’
The navigator signed agreement with one of his bony hands. ‘As a lay preacher, it is my duty to share the blessings of crossing heaven with my fellow believers.’
Lana looked at the android. ‘Zeno?’
‘I have a couple of errands to run, too,’ said the android. ‘I’ll catch up with you later.’
‘I thought you might want to take our new boy and show him a good time.’ Lana regretted saying the words almost as quickly as she spoke. But that isn’t trying to bribe Calder into staying around, is it? Just a common courtesy any captain would show to someone new to the ship. New to the civilized universe, for that matter.
‘Ah, to feel the needs of the flesh and have flesh with needs. Thanks, but no thanks. Given the gang problem on station, I though it might be safer if Calder went along to meet DSD with you. Everyone should meet Dollar-sign at least once in their lives. If only to see why getting pickled isn’t as much fun as the marketing makes out.’
‘Okay then. We’ll catch up at the Fantasma Blanco later,’ said Lana. Part of her was pleased. She could keep an eye on Calder and make sure he didn’t get into any trouble, and the plan hadn’t even looked as if it was her idea. ‘We’ll chew over whether the risk-reward of this job is actually worth the potential burn.’
Calder nodded cheerfully, as though he knew that the Fantasma Blanco was a spacers’ bar named after the effects of a popular drug banned centuries ago. As if he had half a clue about just who it was they were going to meet and how crafty DSD could prove. Well, pretending you knew what you were doing was as much a part of being crew as anything else. Bluffing has worked well enough for me to date.
‘Doesn’t the chief get a say in what cargo we take on?’ asked Calder.
‘I’m the skipper,’ said Lana, ‘nobody gets a say. You just get to voice your thoughts, is all, so I know I’m examining the situation from all the angles. And as far as the chief is concerned, one system looks pretty much the same as the next when you never leave the engine room.’
A screen next to the door indicated a safe seal was formed with the station’s gantry. Lana tugged the lock open . . . a slight sweet smell to the air on the other side. The world of Transference had low traces of methylene in its atmosphere and the station ran their environmental systems just like Mamma had baked below. About the only sweet thing in Transference Station. They walked through a thin cloud of sparkling dust filling the corridor, decontamination nano – imperceptibly testing the visitors’ blood and DNA to make sure their health matched the ship’s pre-arrival check-up data. Pity the authorities never scrub the billions living in the station. Lana was more likely to catch something from Transference’s locals rather than the reverse. After the decon cloud they passed through the habitat’s entrance. Transference Station’s main ring was divided into six levels, if only to give the property realtors something to justify their price differentials. Anyone buying bottom on six didn’t n
eed a mortgage, they needed a laser fence to keep the locals out. Lana saw they were on one of the midlevels, a plaza chamber scattered with fountains and public art. A good attempt to make the station look civilized to visiting eyes, but the station cops in twenty-foot high exo-armour couldn’t be mistaken for modern art, even with the fountains’ water foaming into all sorts of creative rollercoaster shapes under focused gravity compression. A glass-viewing gallery lay in front of Lana, aluminium rails to clutch while watching the spin of the world below. She glanced down. Just as I remember it. Nothing ever changes here. Transference Station locked to its parent planet’s spin, a circlet set above the oceans. Nobody in the Edge had the money and resources to build space elevators – that was strictly alliance tech – so cargo and passengers shuttled between ground and station the economic way, little motes of light exploding across the seas below as craft powered their way into orbit. Engineless drones, little more than water-filled cones riding giga-lasers up to space. Going down it was heat shields and gravity brakes and biodegradable parachutes. The fortieth century and steam power – albeit liquid reaction mass under laser ignition – was still going strong. You have to hand it to humanity; no good idea goes to waste. Everything ended up being recycled – metals, plastics, technologies, politics. No wonder that near-immortal sentients like Zeno ended up jaded. History’s merry-go-round just keeps on spinning. Lana’s thoughts turned to Dollar-sign Dillard waiting for them in his office. Some people cling to the ride just a little bit tight. Yeah, everyone deserved to meet him once. Trouble was, for Lana, she classed this visit as once too often for her taste. She walked towards a crescent of benches on the far side of the viewing gallery, a gaggle of women in colourful dresses gossiping in a language she didn’t speak. A Brazilian derivative, maybe, if their dark features were any guide. Children played around their feet. Lana felt conflicting emotions as she observed the kids enjoying themselves. Forget it, girl. A starship is no place to bring up a toddler. You’re living proof of that. Your whole family dead on a foreign world, leaving you to be raised by a ship’s A.I and an android.
