The driver opened the door and Kimiyo stepped out. She snapped on a pair of shades and looked around. Nathan caught her eye and half raised a hand in greeting. Her hand rose in return and she motioned for Arulio to get out of the car. The tall man exited the car and Nathan saw the sun damn near reflect off his bleached skin. He folded his hands behind his back and walked to the Blue Moon Bandit with confidence. Nathan couldn’t figure out why he was striding with such purpose.
Nathan pulled out his phone. "Duncan, our guests have arrived." The chief of the boat was in the engine room with purple boy running pre-launch diagnostics on the Bandit's systems.
"Marla is greeting them and showing them to their rooms," Duncan said.
Nathan chased down his last socket and buttoned up the red toolbox. He extended a handle from the back and rolled it around the back of the ship on built in wheels, stowing it to the right of the entrance ramp. The ramp itself was between the left and right engine exhaust cowlings. He could hear Marla inside speaking with Kimiyo and Arulio. Their driver walked past him with a nod as he carried their bags into the ship. He took a deep breath, wondered if it was too early for whiskey and walked inside.
Marla was showing Kimiyo the galley and attached common room. Arulio was nowhere to be seen. Both women looked up as Nathan entered the room. "Marla," he said, nodding to his co-pilot, "and how are you, Kimiyo?"
"Just fine, Captain Teller. Marla is giving me a tour of your vessel."
"Well that won't take long. I'm afraid it's not a cruise liner."
"That's all right, Captain. Working for Saji Vy doesn't leave a lot of time for vacations. It's been a long time since I was on a cruise ship so maybe I won't remember the difference."
"Well, the Bandit isn't exactly a scrap hauler either, so I think we'll be able to keep you entertained."
"And I'll have my work as well."
He smiled. Saji's assistant was cute, so as soon as Cole arrived he knew her time would be consumed rejecting bad come on's and horrific flirting attempts. Nathan had Celeste to worry about.
"Where's our other passenger?"
Kimiyo rolled her eyes. "He's resting. Moving about this much tires him."
"You mean the car ride over?"
"His work keeps him very immobile. This will be quite an experience for him."
"I see," Nathan said. "Well, I'll let you get settled in. We're scheduled for lift off in an hour. Marla, I'll need you in the cockpit for the pre-flight checklist."
She nodded. "I'll be there in five."
Nathan headed to his quarters and stripped off the sweat drenched work clothes. He showered, shaved and dressed in a comfortable jumpsuit with the Milky Way Repossessions logo stitched over the left breast pocket. He made his way to the cockpit where Marla was working through the pre-flight checklist.
"How we doing?" He said.
"Everything checks out," she said. "Duncan and Richie have really been putting in some hard work."
"No more compensating for the twitchy number three thruster.?"
"Nope. They also claim to have fixed that rattle in the starboard cowling."
"Good,” he said."That was driving me nuts."
"Never heard myself."
"It was there. What about the crawl drive?"
She tapped off a few checklist items on her data pad. "Supposedly, it's done. Richie built a new extended mount out of titanium. This flight will be the test."
"You don't sound as confident with that one."
"As long as I've been on this boat that crawl drive has been a problem. I want to see it work before I express any confidence."
He smiled and checked the list. Twenty minutes later they were done. Nathan kicked the engines over and engaged the solid hydrogen fusion reactor, taking the Bandit off her batteries. He got up and wandered back to the galley, poured himself a mug full of coffee and looked in on the common room.
Kimiyo was sitting there, looking over a data pad. She looked up when she saw him in the doorway. "Are we ready to leave, Captain?"
"Just about. You can call me Nathan, by the way. We keep things pretty informal. I'm just taking a last walk through so you have about five minutes. You can stay where you are and just use those seat restraints," he gestured with his mug to the side of the chair she was curled up in.
"Thank you, Nathan," she said.
Cole brushed past him as he turned to leave. "What's up, boss?"
"Just about ready for take off, Cole."
Kimiyo stood up. "I'll see to Arulio and then come back here. I imagine he can strap in somewhere in his room?"
Nathan nodded. "He can. There's a jump seat folded into one wall. Cole can show you where it is."
"Sure can. I'm Cole Seger by the way," he said taking her hand.
"Kimiyo. Come with me and I'll introduce you to Arulio."
He looked at Nathan. "Who's that?"
"Arulio is Saji's wetjack. He's the person we're delivering to the cult holding the body barge hostage."
"What the hell's a wetjack? It sounds like something you'd try to talk your girlfriend into doing."
Nathan smiled. "And with that, Kimiyo, I'll leave you in Cole's capable hands."
He worked his way back through the ship, checking the rear hatch and ending his tour in the engine room. Duncan and Richie were playing cards over a lubricant drum.
"All ready to go?" Duncan said.
"We are. It looks like you guys did some good work. I guess we'll see if we fall out of the sky or not."
"No," Duncan said. "Not today."
Nathan looked Richie over. "When will you not be purple anymore?"
The young man cleared his throat. "A couple days."
"Because you look ridiculous."
"You see a lot of it in the clubs downtown."
"Still, you look ridiculous. I imagine it's all the rage among the unemployed and those who owe money to the Syndicate."
"That will be cleared up as soon as we get paid for this job," Richie said.
Nathan sipped his coffee. "I called the union hall this morning. Your application for back pay is being processed now. By the time we return you should have the money in your account."
"Thanks."
"What was the hold up?" Duncan said.
"The kid's got an ex-girlfriend over there."
"Melinda?" Richie said.
"I guess. Anyway, she was holding up your application. Once I got through to a supervisor I was able to clear things up."
"I'll be darned," Richie said. "I thought Melinda would help things along. That's why I called her."
"Did things end well between you two?" Nathan said.
"Not really but I didn't think they were that bad."
"What happened?" Duncan said.
"I owed her some money, you know, from gambling on the dog races."
"Shocking that she would hold a grudge," Nathan said.
"Well, you know how women are," Richie said.
Duncan was laughing. "I think I do, I'm not so sure you know how women are."
"Anyway," Nathan said, "we're ready for lift off. Strap in, pray that you two have done good work and we'll get a move on."
Nathan made his way back to the cockpit and settled in. He checked the status board for all the ship's hatches. "I show green across the board."
"Same here," Marla said. "I've also got seven restraint's showing green. The tower has granted us clearance to depart."
"All right," Nathan said. "Let's fly."
He put power to the thrusters with two large levers and pulled back on the yoke. The Blue Moon Bandit rose smoothly and quickly into the New Mexico sky. The blue sky soon gave way to the blackness of space. They shot through the shuttle lanes, whipped by a space station with large cruise liners docked and headed out toward the Moon.
Marla continued checking the ship's status and fed information to Nathan. "All systems go for jump to the Neptune warpgate," she said.
They crossed the orbit of the Moon. "Too bad it's on the o
ther side of Earth right now," he said. "I always get a kick out of seeing it."
"It’s historical, first step out into the galaxy," Marla said. "Hard to miss the significance."
"Sure there's that but I like the lights from the casinos at Mare Vegas. I can't believe how far out you can see them. Are we lined up for the jump?"
"Right on course."
He amped up the reactor output to charge the FTL jump initiator. "Did you double check our position? I downloaded the latest positioning software and I want to be sure we don't jump into the middle of Triton. Neptune's got one decent moon, I don't want us to barrel into it going faster than light."
"I double checked, Nathan. We're good."
Marla knew her job and Nathan was confident in her abilities but it never hurt to ask twice. He checked the jump initiator. "We're charged and ready to go."
Marla tapped a button on the comm system. "Hold on folks. We're going superluminal."
Nathan tapped a command into the flight computer and the stars outside the cockpit stretched out toward infinity and then went black. It would be like this for the next couple hours until they got to the Neptune warpgate.
Cole grabbed a longneck out of the fridge and slumped into a seat in the galley. He put his boots up on a chair and fidgeted with a handheld game. Light speed jumps always made him skittish, affecting his balance for moments afterward. Having a beer usually helped.
Kimiyo came in a minute later. She didn't speak but made a cup of tea, spiked with something from a flask, and sat down at the table opposite Cole. She relaxed smoothly into the booth along the wall, placed a boot on the chair in front of her and lit a cigarette.
"You smoke?" Cole said.
"Does it bother you?"
"It's tobacco?"
She nodded and offered him the pack. He waved her off.
"I quit five years ago," he said. "Where do you get it from?"
"It's lunar," she said. "There's a farm near Terra Caloris? This crater about half a klick wide with a deep shadow. The old man who runs the hydroponics farm swears its good because of the water they mine from the crater's shadow. It's like a billion years old because a comet crashed there so it does something to the tobacco plant."
Cole nodded and sipped his beer. He didn't have anything to say about moon water and tobacco.
"You like to fly?" She said.
He shrugged his shoulders. "It's part of the job. Not my favorite thing."
"I could tell."
"You like to fly?"
"I do. Working for Saji means a lot of travel. The light speed jumps make me edgy, though. There's that split second where you feel...I don't know. Weird?"
"Nothing. You feel nothing."
"Yeah, you feel like there's a void. Like you're a void. Like where you were is full of nothing, just for a split second. You feel like you might not come back and as soon as you acknowledge that thought? You pop back."
“That’s it exactly, like vertigo to the nth degree.”
She took a long drag on her cigarette and exhaled slowly. Cole drank her in.
“So what do you do around here?” She said.
“I keep a lid on things."
"Meaning?"
He shrugged. "When we repo ships people tend to be upset with us. I'm a calming influence in a stressful situation."
"I think I understand."
"What about you and the albino dude? You guys an item?"
"God, no. Saji hired me to be his sitter," she said, taking another drag. "He can be pretty helpless."
"Like what?"
"You understand that he interfaces directly with computers, right? Like with his brain?”
"Sure."
"Well, in order to do that, he had to have all kinds of things done to himself. Terrible things that I wouldn't do. He had extra organs implanted to support the mechanical stuff they put in his head. He doesn't even have blood, not like you and me. They replaced it with this nanite infused fluid that maintains his body temperature and accelerates his metabolism."
Cole held his drink halfway to his mouth and a raised eyebrow. "Why would he do that?"
She looked around and leaned across the table a little. "I've met a few of these guys and they all say the same thing; the money. And it's true, they make a ton. Most of them sign ten year contracts and then they can retire for life. Except they never do. They get hooked on mainlining information."
"It's that addictive?"
"Everywhere he goes, every system he passes floods him with information. I've seen him get so immersed in the background noise that he'll walk out in traffic if someone isn't there to stop him."
"So that's your job? Keep him from being so distracted he doesn't kill himself?"
“Can you believe it?”
“Still, it must be something to have all that information flowing into you.”
Kimiyo shook her head. “I don’t know. He drifts in and out of reality. I wouldn’t want to be so out of touch or turn myself over to things I can’t fully control.”
Cole nodded. “I understand. That’s why I drink during light speed jumps. No control over the situation.”
She raised her glass of spiked tea in agreement.
17.
The Blue Moon Bandit popped back into normal space near the orbit of Neptune. Nathan saw the big blue planet right where it should be and double checked his visuals against the universal positioning system. They were right on course for the warpgate.
“Marla, can you get us in the slot for the warpgate transition?” Nathan said. “I’m going to check on things.”
Nathan got up, wandered back into the galley and poured himself a cup of coffee. He saw Cole chatting with Kimiyo and raised a mug in their direction. Hopefully that wasn’t leading to drama. A quick trip down a short flight of stairs and he was in the crew quarters. He knocked on a door and heard Arulio tell him to come in.
The wetjack was sitting up on his bunk, his head tilted to one side. Nathan raised his hand. “I thought I would check in, Arulio. We’ve cleared the first super-luminal jump and we’ll be transiting the warpgate in a few moments.”
“Thank you, captain. I’m quite all right.”
“Okay, then. If you need anything, just let me know.”
“Absolutely. Your ship is really quite unique.”
Nathan stopped halfway out the door. “How so?”
“The operating system is stifled. Your AI isn’t turned on. I’ve never flown in a vessel that didn’t use an artificial intelligence.”
“Oh,” Nathan said. “Well, The AI is there, we just don’t have the avatar turned on. Marla and I don’t need a third person in the cockpit. But even without the avatar you can’t fly faster than light or transit a warpgate without some computer help.”
“It’s so stifled,” Arulio said. He stared at the far wall and lost eye contact with Nathan.
“Right,” Nathan said. “I’ll be heading back now.”
The pale skinned man on the bed had lost interest or was ignoring him so Nathan closed the door and headed back.
He settled into his seat in the cockpit. “This is going to be a strange job, Marla.”
They blew into the Alpha system with a bright white flash from the warpgate. Nathan punched in the coordinates provided for the meet with the group holding the Charon and her crew hostage. Marla took them super-luminal and an hour later they were in orbit around a terrestrial world called Olympus. It was the most populated world in the Alpha system, having been terraformed more than two hundred years before. Olympus was the first planet in the Alpha system to be settled and updated for the occupation of humans. It had previously been a planet that had more in common with Venus than Earth. Its thick atmosphere had been extremely hot and full of choking carbon dioxide but the same methods that allowed Venus to be occupied in the Sol system had changed Olympus into a paradise. Bright blue and white from space, it reminded Nathan of Earth.
It took an hour to clear customs at an orbital space station a
nd then they were cruising down toward Clearland City. It was on the east coast of the largest continent on Olympus. As they flew over the city, Nathan could see factories, warehouses and smokestacks. Kimiyo snuck into the cockpit and scoped out the city below.
“Looks pretty dirty down there for a planet known as ‘Paradise’,” she said.
Nathan shrugged his shoulders. “Building things means making a mess. There are industrial sites on Earth that still look like this.”
“Still, I hope we aren’t here for long.”
“According to Saji’s information we should meet with the contact for the Children of the Apocalyptic Rainbow somewhere around here. We’ll contact them after we land.”
Kimiyo wrinkled her nose. “I think I can smell it.”
“Go buckle in. We’ll be landing soon.”
“Okay. I’ll check on Arulio,” she said.
Nathan dropped the Blue Moon Bandit onto a landing pad on the east side of the city. The area did look run down, he admitted to himself. Marla was running through the post-flight checklist. He went to see the crew.
They were in the galley sitting around the table. Nathan grabbed a cup of coffee and leaned back against the counter. “Okay, everyone,” he said, “we’ve arrived on Olympus. This is where we’re supposed to meet the contact for the group that is holding the body barge and its crew. That person is supposed to make sure we’ve brought what we’re supposed to and provide us with the final delivery location. The meeting is tomorrow night, if I’ve managed to keep the time changes correct across two worlds and two solar systems.”
“So what do we do now?” Richie asked.
“Well, it’s dinner time so I think we should step out for a bite to eat,” Nathan said.
“Cool,” Richie said.
“Not so fast, my lavender friend. My understanding is that Arulio has trouble in social situations so he won’t be joining us. The adults are going out. You’ll be staying here as his babysitter.”
Milky Way Repo Page 11
