“Trying. Gotta stay in shape.”
“Well, you’re certainly doing that. Just come from the gym?”
“You know me so well.”
“It was either there or the gun range,” she said. “Lucky guess.”
Platinum locks curled around her ears. He felt himself stirring like he always did around her. “Just getting off work at the pawn shop?”
She nodded. “Pulled a twelve hour shift today. That damn Sean takes his time hiring help. We lost a girl last month when she went to nursing school. I’ve been working overtime ever since.”
A waitress came over and she ordered a cheeseburger and a beer.
“I don’t know how you look so good eating crap like that,” he said.
“Your mother teach you any manners?” She said. “You comment on what a girl eats? Worrying about the size of my ass isn’t your problem anymore.”
“Your ass looks fine.”
“Damn straight it does.”
“Forget I said anything,” he said.
“I make a habit of doing that.”
He held up his hands. “I give. Don’t get all riled up. I was just making conversation.”
“You could ask me about my day. Sometimes I have really good stories. You wouldn’t believe what people pawn.”
“Okay. How was work today?”
“It sucked. Nothing happened.”
“I see…”
“But last week, ah, now I’ve got a good story from last week.”
“Do tell.”
Her beer came and she sipped it. “A guy comes in, looking to sell a kidney.”
“You guys traffic in organs?” He said. “I didn’t think you were licensed for that.”
“We don’t take them out, we just broker them. You know, set up the buyer with a seller.”
“Okay. So what’s the big deal?”
“Wasn’t his kidney.”
“What?”
“He had it in a cooler packed in ice,” she said. “Like he was off to a picnic.”
“He had someone else’s kidney?”
“Oh yeah. We asked him who it belonged to and you know what he said?”
Cole shook his head.
“He said we shouldn’t worry about it. All we needed to know was that it was a clean organ and that we shouldn’t have any trouble moving it.”
“I assume he was selling it and not pawning it.”
“He wanted two grand for it.”
“Sounds like a steal at that price.”
“Oh, it was steal all right,” she said. “I’d tripped the silent alarm when he opened the lid. Earth Protective Services came in as we were haggling, took one look in the cooler and asked him where he got the kidney.”
“What did he say?”
“He told them it was none of their business and that they shouldn’t worry about it.”
“No, really?” EPS were not known for their patience or having a sense of humor.
“Yeah,” she said. Her cheeseburger came and she took a big bite. “The EPS officers bent him over the counter, slapped a restraint bolt to the back of his neck and walked him out by remote control.”
“Did they ever figure out where the kidney came from?”
“His wife.”
“No kidding?”
“No kidding,” she said. “One of the Protective Services officers came back later and told us the guy and his wife had an argument about dinner and he killed her. Left her in the bathtub. He was broke and figured that parting her out was the only way he could raise enough cash to get a ticket off world.”
“That’s just crazy,” he said.
“You ever see anything like that when you were in the Protective Services?”
“No, I was in the EPS but I was a Marshal. We hunted down fugitives. I saw plenty of murderers but only after they escaped from a rehab facility or when they were sentenced in court. I never had to look at dead wives in bathtubs.”
“Well in the pawn business you see all kinds of nutty stuff.” She finished off her cheeseburger and offered him her fries.
“No,” he said. “I still don’t eat those.”
“You going home?”
He nodded. “Yeah, it’s late.”
“You have to get up early?”
“No, Nathan hasn’t found us a job for about a week.”
“Things are bad?”
“I don’t know. It could be that people have started paying their bills. I’d hate to think that people with private spacecraft have suddenly started living within their means. It would be bad for business.”
“Look, I’m kind of glad I ran into you,” she said. “We need some help down at the shop. I almost called you but I heard you were off-planet.”
“I’ve been back for about a week now.”
“Okay, well it’s kind of short notice. I need a strong arm down at the shop tomorrow.”
“For what?”
She looked around the diner again and leaned in close. “Sean has some special deal going down; a private sale to some big shot. He wanted me to get some extra security. I have a private company lined up but I would rather have someone I know. Do you still have your license and permits?”
“Sure,” he said. “I have to keep them up to work with Nathan. What would I have to do?”
“The sale is at two in the afternoon tomorrow,” she said. “Why don’t you come by about eleven so we can get set up. The whole thing should be over by three.”
“What’s it pay?” He said.
“I can give you five hundred.”
“Am I carrying a gun?” The answer was going to be yes, even if she said ‘no’. He wasn’t going into this kind of set up unarmed.
“Yes,” she said. “You’ll need a gun. Sean wants to put on a show of being well protected.”
“Then I’ll need a seven-fifty,” he said.
“Why?”
“If you’re asking me to wear a gun it means I might use it. I need a thousand for that but since we’re old friends I’ll take seven-fifty.”
“I don’t know…”
“Stop it. We both know what a couple of guards from a private agency would cost for four hours. Plus you’re getting me instead of a couple rent-a-cops.”
She considered it for a moment. “All right, seven-fifty.”
“Who is the customer?”
“I really don’t know,” she said. “You know Sean. People pawn all kinds of things. If he thinks he can make a buck he’ll sell to anyone, including people whose business isn’t exactly on the up-and-up.”
“Okay. Well, it doesn’t matter. Sean is a business man. He won’t want trouble.”
She swallowed the last of her beer and pointed outside. “You want a ride home? I’m leaving.”
“On your bike?” He said.
“Yes.”
“I don’t know…”
She stood up. “You can walk if you want. Burn off that salad.”
“All right. It’s pretty late.”
They walked out in to the night air. Even at this hour Go City traffic was busy. Shuttles from the starliners came and went at all hours of the day, ferrying people up to orbital stations so they could board the large starships or bringing them back from voyages to the colonies in the Sol system or Alpha.
They mounted the hover bike and Cole put his hands on her hips, giving her a squeeze. "Don’t get too comfortable,” she said. “I’m just giving you a ride home. I’m not coming up.”
“Why not?”
She turned her head. “You didn’t even pay for my cheeseburger.”
She gunned the engine and they tore off down the street. Cole gripped her more tightly. Flying with Nathan was one thing but zipping along city streets half a meter off the ground at what felt like the speed of sound was quite another.
She got him to his building in five minutes flat. It would have been a twenty minute train ride. He got off the bike and it bobbed with the release of his weight.
“You sure you don’t want to c
ome up?”
She smiled. “I’m sure.”
“You used to like coming up.”
“You remember that EPS officer from the story? The one who came back to tell us what happened?”
“Yeah.”
“I go up to his place now.”
He smiled. “You’re a cop groupie.”
“I am not. Dating you and him does not make me a cop groupie.”
“I’m pretty sure it supports my position more than yours.”
“You really know how to talk to women. Hard to believe you’re still single.” She flipped down the face shield on her helmet and sped off into traffic, weaving between a cab and a pod car. Cole watched her go and wondered, not for the first time, how the good ones kept getting away.
9.
Duncan swore as he busted a knuckle turning a wrench on a stubborn bolt. His large frame was wedged in the housing of the Blue Moon Bandit’s starboard side ram scoop housing. He was balanced on a hydraulic scissor lift that wobbled every time he pulled on the bolt he was trying to loosen. Richie was next to him, shining a light into the dark space. The New Mexico sun was beating down on them and was blinding if you looked anywhere but into the ram scoop housing.
“Are you sure Nathan heard a rattle from up here?” Richie said as he maneuvered the trouble light.
“He said he did,” Duncan said. The wrench lay inside the scoop as he caught his breath.
“In outer space he heard this rattle?”
“From inside the ship while we were in space,” Duncan said. The new boy was being a bit of a smart ass. “This scoop has an inner liner that comes loose.”
“So replace it.”
“The Blue Moon Bandit has a budget,” Duncan said. “A scoop liner isn’t in it.”
“Is Captain Teller tight?”
“No tighter than any other ship owner. You spend what you have to, to keep them flying and not a penny more.”
The young man boosted himself up onto the faring and walked back over the starboard engine. He could feel the heat from the hull baking through his boots and pulled a pair of gloves on in case he had to touch the composite shell of the ship. The morning sun had been up for a few hours but Richie could tell it would be brutally hot soon.
The ship looked good. He recognized the type. It was a converted freighter, built to haul hazardous waste off planet. It was a tough design, built around an incredibly strong structure meant to contain radioactive waste in the event of a crash or collision.
The ship also had massive engines, capable of carrying it from Earth’s surface straight into space. It was expensive to launch spacecraft from planetary surfaces so direct-to-orbit ships like the Blue Moon Bandit were rare. Most people and payloads were sent into orbit via magnetic catapults. Shuttles were loaded with passengers and cargo and set upon giant launch vehicles which raced up ramps a mile long or more. The vessel, passengers and cargo arrived in orbit where they docked with one of four large space stations and transferred to large star ships. He could see such a structure off in the distance. This ship didn’t bother with such a process. The Blue Moon Bandit was all about brute force. Huge engines provided massive thrust to a compact, sturdy vehicle.
Richie looked the hull over, searching for defects, signs of abuse or disrepair. It wasn’t perfect, he saw, but it wasn’t worse than the few other ships on which he’d served. There were some pock marks, probably caused by impacts from micro-meteorites. He climbed down a ladder near the back and walked underneath toward the front. The bottom hull had burn marks, some very dark, evidence of atmospheric re-entries done in a hurry. Apparently Captain Teller could be hard on his ship.
Duncan climbed down the ladder and joined him in the shade under the Bandit’s belly. He wiped the sweat from his forehead and took a long pull on a water bottle. He gestured toward Richie; “Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure,” Richie said.
“Why are you purple?” Richie’s skin was a deep purple. Duncan hadn’t noticed earlier because he had been up on the ladder and in the faring of the ram scoop when the kid arrived to work. “You look like a skinny egg plant.”
“I’m hiding from a leg breaker for the mob.”
Duncan looked at him wide eyed. “You haven’t paid Atomic Jack?”
“It’s taking a little longer to get paid than I thought,” he said.
“He gave you a deadline and you missed it? I can’t believe that.”
“I need three more days and my back pay will come through, I swear,” Richie said. “I couldn’t go to him and ask for more time. He would kill me.”
“He’s going to kill you no matter what,” Duncan said. “Now when he does it you’ll be purple.”
“Lay off the purple stuff, okay? Kids are doing these new dye treatments, you know? In night clubs? They’re orange one week, red the next. I figured he wouldn’t look my way if he thought I was a kid.”
“We have to speak with Nathan,” Duncan said. He leaned back against a landing strut, stretching his back. “The whole crew is in this because we stood up for you in that alley. Until this joker is paid we all have targets on our back. Are you sure you didn’t get paid and gamble on the dogs? Try to run it up and pay this guy off in one shot?” Duncan had seen desperate people do stupider things.
“No, I swear,” he said. “I just haven’t been paid yet. Call the union hall. They’re helping me get this straightened around.”
Duncan slid down the strut and sat on the landing gear. “Kid, I vouched for you and for the last week you’ve been a huge help fixing all the busted things on this heap. But since your debt has become a problem for the crew I am going to call the union hall. I’m going to check your story. If it’s true, we’ll work something out. If it’s not, I don’t want to see you again.”
“Go make the call, Duncan. I’ll be right here when you get back.”
“Look, we don’t get rich doing this,” Duncan said. “We do a damn sight better than okay and none of us is starving but it’s going to take more than a few trips out for you to pay off this jackal.”
“I understand,” Richie said.
“I want to be sure you do,” Duncan said. “We get an assignment and do a lot of legwork before we lift off. A lender, usually a bank notifies us of a repo job. We investigate the person who took out the loan. Are they on Earth or off planet? Are they dangerous? Is the vessel sufficiently valuable for us to chase it? Where does the person who took out the loan hang out? What are his habits? It’s only after all these questions are answered that we go get the collateral.”
“The collateral?” Richie said.
“The vessel is collateral on a loan,” Duncan said. “The lender loaned money to the signatory to purchase the vessel. The signatory doesn’t pay and then they become our problem.”
Richie took off his hard hat and sat on it in the New Mexico dust. “Do we ever have trouble with the signatories? Like we did on the Martha Tooey?”
Duncan shook his head. “Rarely. The Tooey was being held for ransom, plain and simple. We’ve only had that happen a few times. Ninety percent of the time the signer is docile. We move in, show them our documentation and take the vessel. I have a remote control process of my own design that makes it easy. We used it on the Martha Tooey.”
“I remember,” Richie said. He took out a candy bar and unwrapped it. “What about the other ten percent? The ones who aren’t docile?”
“Well, that’s why we hired Cole. He used to be a marshal so he’s good at reading people and can handle himself. If Nathan is laying down his rap and a signer is going to do something squirrelly Cole can usually tell. We just let him do his thing and resolve the situation.”
“He seemed pretty tough, all right.”
“He’s fine,” Duncan said. “Just don’t get on his bad side.”
Richie took another bite of his candy. “Is Captain Teller a good guy?”
“Nathan? Yeah, he’s a good guy. Tough but fair.”
“Cheap?” Richie
said. “The captains I’ve served under were all pretty tight with a buck.”
“Oh yeah, he’s tighter with a dollar than anyone you’ll ever meet. I understand why, though. He owns the ship but he has to fuel it, fix it and improve it. He has taxes, bills and payroll. So when he expects us to be creative and come up with unorthodox solutions, we know why. He wanted me to talk to you about the pay scale.”
“Yeah? You spoke to him about me?”
“Of course,” Duncan said. “You think I can just put a guy on his ship without him knowing about it? Anyway, the standard rule applies.”
“Which is?”
“You crew out when we need you and you pull a half share for the first year. After that you bump up to a full share.”
“How much does the ship take?”
“Usually half of the gross pay for the job,” Duncan said. “Fuel is expensive, as are replacement parts and consumables like food. The crew splits what’s left. Nathan gets two shares because he owns the ship. Marla, Cole and I get a full share and you’ll a get a half share. The good news is that Nathan owns the ship outright so there isn’t a loan payment to eat into our shares.” He thought about seeing Nathan at Lucy’s and wondered if he’d just lied to the new kid.
“Do you do all right? We haven’t had a job in the week I’ve been on the crew.”
“We do get dry spells,” Duncan said. “The longest was about three weeks but I wouldn’t worry. Spacecraft are expensive to operate and somebody, somewhere, is always behind on their payments. Nathan will be calling soon with a job.”
10.
Nathan wasn’t having any luck finding a job. The morning had been spent getting in touch with his contacts at the banks (again) and loan companies (again) and no one had an outstanding loan with a deadbeat for a signatory. Now he was sitting in a coffee house meeting with Falco, a German software developer who specialized in immersive environments. He could create realistic situations using a combination of software and specialized hardware. Falco had spent the past year working on a project for Nathan. He sat down at Nathan’s table fifteen minutes late for their appointment.
“Nathan,” he said. “How are you my friend?” He was shorter than Nathan and a little stocky. Not fat or even chubby but thick in that way that showed he sat a lot. He had dirty blonde hair and was still young enough that his face was flecked with acne. His English was almost flawless.
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