The Callisto Gambit

by Felix R. Savage

  “Did they all come?”

  “All,” Father Lynch said, “except Kiyoshi Yonezawa.”

  Michael breathed a sigh of relief. He had no wish to confront Yonezawa when the boss wasn’t here.

  Then his grin faded. If Yonezawa hadn’t come up to the Salvation with the rest of his people … that meant he was still down on Callisto.

  Well, it’s a big moon.

  And I’ve got the Angel.

  “Hah!” Dr. Hasselblatter said. “Declined to stick his head in a noose, did he? Wise man.”

  The red lights reflected off Father Lynch’s faceplate. “If there’s a noose,” he said. “we’re the ones holding it.”

  “Watch your goddamn mouth, priest, ja?”

  Michael had no idea what the two men were talking about. But he had no trouble understanding the irate interruption from Zygmunt. “Hey! I need to dock. I’ve got five hundred people asking me what the hell is the problem. OK, they’re too polite to say it like that. But we don’t want to give them the impression that we’re disorganized.”

  Dr. Hasselblatter raised his voice, although there was really no need to shout on suit-to-suit radio comms. “JUNIOR! Get in here NOW!”

  Junior arrowed out of the blackness and into the Angel’s airlock, knocking his father over.

  The Pegasus’s jackstands shot out like pulled punches.

  Michael jumped up the Angel’s gangway, elbowed the Hasselblatters out of his way, and ordered the airlock to close.

  They all rolled into the cockpit. Michael planted himself in the pilot’s couch and panted, “SHIP COMMAND: Launch!”

  xi.

  Kiyoshi left the piglets snorting happily in one of the Heinlein Hotel’s biggest suites. He’d scattered feed all over the floor for them. He went downstairs and asked to speak to the manager. “My people have left. So I’ll only be needing one room from tonight.”

  “You paid in advance for forty rooms.”

  “Yes, I know. For a week. But I’ll only be needing one of them, so I’d like my money back, please.”

  The problem was that he’d paid with a combination of Canadian farmland, physical iridium bearer’s certificates, and tourism stocks. The manager claimed he couldn’t refund that stuff, as it was now worth more than it had been two days ago. Kiyoshi said he would take cash. The manager said he didn’t have cash. Kiyoshi called him a liar. The manager gave him back a few of the bearer’s certificates so he wouldn’t do anything violent.

  Kiyoshi stomped out of the hotel, almost as broke as he had been to begin with. He hoped his pigs would still be there when he got back, although he couldn’t bring himself to care much either way. What did pigs matter, when his people were gone?

  He walked to Westhab. Along the way, he thought about what he was going to do. His steps slowed as he neared Legacy’s Leather Goods.

  The plaza of Westhab 2 was busier now. When he was here before, it had been early morning, local time, the shops barely open. Now it was noon. The sun-tube blazed. Ice-creams dripped in tourists’ fists. Window-shoppers wandered in and out of the boutiques. The better-off refugees had to fill their time somehow.

  Coming level with the doorway, he glanced inside. He saw that in addition to luggage, the shop also sold leather clothing.

  He smiled to himself and went in.

  People pulled away from him. Guy in an EVA suit, empty-handed, stinking like he’d spent months on a tramp hauler. No wonder.

  The shopkeeper moved towards him, clearly intending to ease him out of the shop—and checked.

  At the same time, a flyer knifed into Kiyoshi’s inbox. Would you like to sign up for our customer loyalty program? Enter your name and ID here. He deleted it. Not falling for that.

  The shopkeeper was an older man. His gray hair grew in wings curling back from his ears. The deep lines on either side of his mouth—so easy to fix with cosmetic surgery—spoke of well-earned wisdom and taste. Just what you wanted in a fellow who was about to sell you a four-figure handbag. But there was a petulant twist to his lips.

  “Can I help you?”

  “Yeah,” Kiyoshi said. “I need clothes.”

  “You may be interested in our genuine calfskin line. Trousers, shirts, and jackets …”

  “Got anything cheaper?”

  The petulant set of the shopkeeper’s mouth grew more pronounced. He led Kiyoshi to the back of the shop, where leather garments hung on a standing rack. “These are samples. If you see anything you like, we can print it up in your size.”

  “Printed? Then it wouldn’t be real leather.”

  “No,” the shopkeeper said, “it would not.”

  He turned his back on Kiyoshi and went to help other customers. Kiyoshi browsed through the samples. There was a mirror behind the rack. He watched the shopkeeper explaining the merits of a rucksack with way too many pockets, zips, and tool holsters for the couple who were interested in it. The shopkeeper spoke fast, whizzing through his sales patter. He was clearly rattled.

  He suspects, Kiyoshi thought. But he isn’t sure.

  Kiyoshi himself, on the other hand, was now quite sure who the shopkeeper was.

  And he was also sure that he didn’t want his help.

  What help could he give me, anyway? Jun was AWOL. The solar system was being bombed into rubble. Star Force was tied down in the Martian theater. The entirety of the UN’s resources, both material and human, were being sucked into this stupid, destructive war. All that remained out here on the frontier was empty promises and rubbish.

  Exhibit A: Oleg Threadley, formerly a colonel in the dreaded Information Security Agency, now running a leather goods boutique on Callisto.

  Kiyoshi called him back. “I’d like two pairs of these, two of this, one of these, and that rucksack you were showing those people.”

  “What fabric did you have in mind for the trousers and shirts?”

  “Oh, something cheap.”

  “And what color?”

  “Black.”

  Threadley tapped on his tablet. A printer started up in the room behind the shop. “It will take just a few minutes to print those up for you.”

  “Print me up a couple of plain t-shirts and some underwear, too. I’m sure you’ve got templates on there.”

  Threadley shot him a hostile glare. “Of course. Black?”

  “Black,” Kiyoshi confirmed. “How much will that be, with the rucksack?”

  “The rucksack is real leather. It’s treated with a special polyurethane layer which prevents cracking in extremely cold environments, while also making it resistant to the chemicals commonly used in decontamination procedures. Translation, you can wear it in vacuum. It costs 6,000 spiders.”

  “Whew. That’s steep.”

  Threadley smirked viciously. “Did you wish to pay in cash?”

  “Do you take physical iridium bearer’s certificates?”

  Kiyoshi walked out of the shop wearing drainpipes, a shirt with lots of pockets, and a jacket with even more pockets and superfluous zips and buckles, all in black fake leather.

  “You look like a collision between a gothic folk band and a cutlery drawer,” said Threadley. They were outside.

  “How much’ll you give me not to post your identity on the internet?”

  “You don’t know my identity.”

  Kiyoshi fended off some more wifi-borne spam. Some of it was almost good enough to get past his filters. The old man really wanted to confirm his identity.

  Kiyoshi didn’t need data scraper programs for that. Memory sufficed. “Your loyal customers might want to know that Legacy’s Leather Goods is a front for the ISA … Oleg.”

  Oleg Threadley’s eyes glittered with hate. “On second thoughts, keep your bearer’s certificates. Your purchases are on the house.”

  “I appreciate it,” Kiyoshi said. He walked away, leaving Threadley standing with narrowed eyes in the door of his shop.

  He was pretty sure the old man wouldn’t report Kiyoshi’s visit to anyone. He had no e
vidence, no proof, no probable cause, nothing. And so what if Threadley did file a report with Earth? What, exactly, were they going to do about it, in the middle of a war?

  Kiyoshi’s next stop was several levels further down, closer to the stinking bedlam of Hel’s Kitchen.

  In a corner of Westhab 6, dishevelled refugees sprawled on a bench in front of Hammer & Tong’s. This shop’s name was not bad grammar. It was—as Kiyoshi had had explained to him last night—a play on the name of Lewis Tong, the sword geek he’d met at Molly’s. Kiyoshi’s first question, of course, had been, “Is there a Hammer, too?”

  Tong had cackled. “There sure is! You’ll have to stop by and meet him.”

  Now, even before he entered the shop, Kiyoshi got the joke. At the end of the bench in front of the shop stood a dalek-class robot. Multicolored lights ran peacefully around its dome. Its right gripper held a large—in fact, comically oversized—hammer.

  Kiyoshi squeezed past the refugees, into the cramped shop. It was just a hole in the wall with a counter running down its length. Behind the counter stood Lewis Tong. “Security?” Kiyoshi said, jerking a thumb at the robot outside.

  “Oh, Hammer? Heh, heh. Yeah. Can’t be too careful, considering the nature of the goods.”

  The counter doubled as a display case full of knives. On the wall behind Tong hung swords and daggers that Hardware Engineer Asada would have dismissed with a wordless eye-roll. But even fakes could still kill.

  “Lookin’ good,” Tong said with a cackle, running his eye over Kiyoshi. “Got yourself some fancy duds.”

  “Think these will impress Molly?”

  “You could try wearing the price tags on the outside. Can’t think of anything else that would interest her in your skinny ass.”

  “Unfortunately, I didn’t spend that much on them. Not real leather.”

  “Heh, heh. Let’s hear it for convincing fakes.”

  Small talk out of the way, they got down to business. Kiyoshi laid Hardware Engineer Asada’s dagger on the counter.

  Tong’s eyes lit up. “Changed your mind?”

  “Nope. Still not selling. But I was wondering if you’d accept this as a surety.”

  “For what? You need a loan?”

  “Something a bit heavier.”

  Tong flicked a glance at the door. “Hammer!” he shouted. “Come in here and mind the shop for a minute.”

  The dalek-class bot rolled into the shop. “Yes, master,” it said. It squeezed behind the counter and came to a halt, resting its hammer on the counter-top.

  Kiyoshi followed Tong into a back room piled with manufacturer’s samples and polyfoam crates. A lathe stood in the middle of the room, proving that Tong made some of his fakes himself. He shut the door. “Cameras in the shop. City requires ‘em. Prob’ly isn’t anyone watching anymore. But better safe than sorry.”

  Kiyoshi idly spun the dagger around his fingers—a trick he’d spent a ridiculous amount of time mastering, years ago. “So what have you got?”

  Tong opened a crate. Gunmetal gleamed. “Zero.5s. Lightly used.”

  “Even Star Force doesn’t use those crappy-ass rifles anymore.”

  “I wouldn’t call them crappy-ass. But I guess you’re lookin’ for something smaller.”

  “Yep. Can’t stuff an assault rifle down my pants.”

  “OK.” Tong moved crates around, looked in the wrong place, tried again. “How about this?”

  He held up a pistol as long as Kiyoshi’s forearm. It had a chunky barrel and a banana clip.

  “Flechette gun?”

  “The darts aren’t big enough to qualify as flechettes. Don’t get me wrong, this baby is dangerous. 800 meters per second muzzle velocity. Zero recoil. The darts are armor-piercin’. They’d go through an EVA suit, for example. But they aren’t smart. Not like the darts Star Force is orderin’ these days. You gotta wonder why the Farce needs smart darts to fight AI-controlled spaceships … Anyway. This needlegun might be just what you’re lookin’ for. Depending on what you’re lookin’ to do with it.”

  Tong’s gaze was suddenly as sharp as Threadley’s.

  “I was kind of hoping for an energy weapon,” Kiyoshi said, avoiding the question.

  “Then you’ll hafta go somewhere else. I don’t sell lasers.”

  “I’ll take this.”

  Tong held the needlegun out of his reach. “Ain’t you forgetting something?”

  “You don’t need to know what I want it for. You don’t want to know.”

  “Son, I could care less. But you gotta give me the dagger. You’re tradin’ it in. Right?”

  “Not trading it in,” Kiyoshi said. “Just leaving it here for a while.” He handed it over.

  Tong stroked and even sniffed the blade, as if making sure Kiyoshi hadn’t swapped it for a fake overnight. He looked up with a mischievous smile. “Don’t be mad, but I kinda hope they frag you, so you never come back to pick this up. Naw, naw. Just kidding, son.”

  “Got any extra clips for the needlegun?”

  Two hours later, Kiyoshi was sitting on the southbound Ice Spires Express. As Colin Wetherall had predicted, it was three-quarters empty. Kiyoshi had a carriage pretty much to himself. He sat in the darkness of Callisto’s night, elbows on his knees, staring at the floor.

  His new rucksack, wedged between his feet, held his EVA suit and the needlegun.

  No way he’d have got away with this in normal times. But everything was falling apart. He’d scored a deep discount on the holiday package tour he purchased at the spaceport. No security scans, no searches—the peacekeepers who would have performed those functions were busy elsewhere, screwing bribes out of refugees and scavenging parts from crashed spaceships. The tour company didn’t care. Just gimme your money.

  One thing he hadn’t had time to do was buy that course of anti-addiction meds he needed. His hangover—what non-junkies called withdrawal symptoms: a combination of dry mouth, twitchiness, headache, and the desire for more drugs—was back, mild but insistent. He caught himself wondering if he could score some stim when they got there. He pushed the thought out of his mind. He needed to be sober to do this.

  He cued up some music on his BCI. Didn’t matter what. Just something with a beat. The bleak landscape whipped past.

  xii.

  Michael sat in the pilot’s couch of the Angel, hungry and cold.

  “I wonder what Junior is doing,” Dr. Hasselblatter said.

  They could hear crashes and bumps from the direction of the keel tube, which opened directly out of the back of the cockpit.

  Michael shrugged. Junior had said he wanted to explore the Angel—he’d never been on board before. That’s probably what he was doing now. If he broke something, it would be the boss’s fault for allowing him to come.

  Michael had other things to worry about, such as: Where’s the boss?

  They were supposed to meet him right here, right now.

  The optical feed screen displayed the Angel’s present location, 500 kilometers south of Asgard Spaceport. Starlight gleamed on a cluster of luminous knobs to the north, so far away they looked thumb-sized. These were the famous ice spires. Michael wasn’t impressed. In every other direction, a rocky, icy wasteland extended to the horizon. To Michael, the terrain looked like frozen granola. A thick blanket of dust, untouched since the birth of the solar system, had puffed up around the Angel when she touched down. Her drive had actually ignited the dust, surrounding the ship with a fireball of plasma for a instant, until the thrusters cut out. That had been scary—but not dangerous, the Angel had assured him.

  Otherwise, their landing had been hitch-free. Michael couldn’t take much credit. All he’d done was say yes whenever the Angel asked him for permission to do something. She was one smart ship.

  He punched his couch lightly, trying to align it with Callisto’s gravity. Because the terrain was so uneven, the Angel had come to rest at a tilt, 6 degrees off the vertical. It was annoying, like being back on the Kharbage Collector wh
en the rotator arm stuck halfway down.

  “That sounds ominous,” Dr. Hasselblatter said.

  “What? I don’t hear anything.”

  “Exactly.” Dr. Hasselblatter popped his harness and plunged down the keel tube. Michael followed. Callisto’s 0.126 gees of gravity pulled him gently down. He held onto the grab handles to break his fall.

  Below him, Dr. Hasselblatter vanished into the museum.

  An instant passed, and then: “JUNIOR! Were you or were you not TOLD not to touch the EXHIBITS!”

  Uh oh, Michael thought. A dreadful premonition took hold of him.

  As he arrowed into the museum, he already knew what he was going to see.

  Junior, in Michael’s mecha, which he’d given the boss for his collection.

  Actually, it was even worse than that.

  Junior had apparently tried to make the mecha do yoga. He’d got its grippers locked behind its back, and two of its legs behind its head, with the other two bent around the other way to meet them, so that all four feet formed a knot. The mecha lay on its side on the floor of the museum, with Junior inside. There were sear marks on the floor, and several display cases had cracks in them. Junior had evidently tried out the mecha’s thrusters before he got himself tied into a knot.

  Dr. Hasselblatter leaned against the wall and laughed himself silly.

  “I’m stuck,” Junior said in a small voice.

  Dr. Hasselblatter wiped his eyes and turned to Michael. “This used to be yours, didn’t it? Can you get him out?”

  Michael inhaled shakily. He felt himself to be balanced on a razor’s edge between a screaming, shaking meltdown … and the knowledge that the boss would expect better of him.

  In the most normal voice he could manage, he said, “I had this mecha for years, but I never made it do that.”

  He pulled at the mecha’s feet. Junior worked the levers and pedals from inside the cage. Servo motors whirred. There was a smell of burning.

  “It’s broken,” Michael said. “You broke it.”

  Biting his lip, he yanked his multi-tool off his belt. Half-blind with anger—deaf to Dr. Hasselblatter’s nervous offers to do it for him—he hacked the mecha’s two front legs off at the first joint with his cutter laser.