“We’ll pass with flying colours.”
“OK, I’ll leave it up to the pair of you what you do.”
“We’ll get the inspectors up here tomorrow morning. Norfolk’s CAB office only runs stage D checks in any case. Our own diagnostics are stricter than that.”
“Fine. I’ll call tomorrow for an update.”
“Sure. ’Bye, Joshua.”
Tehama asteroid was one of the most financially and industrially successful independent industrial settlements in the New Californian star system. A stony iron rock twenty-eight kilometres long and eighteen wide, tracing an irregular fifty-day elliptical orbit within the trailing Trojan point of Yosemite, the system’s largest gas giant, it had all the elements and minerals necessary to support life, barring hydrogen and nitrogen. But that deficiency was made good from a snowball-shaped carbonaceous chondritic asteroid, one kilometre wide, which had been nudged into a fifty-kilometre orbit around Tehama in 2283. Since then its shale had been mined and refined; hydrogen was combined with oxygen to produce water, plain and simple; nitrogen underwent more complex bonding procedures to form useable nitrates; hydrocarbons were an essential. They were all introduced to the caverns being bored out of Tehama’s metallic ore, producing a habitable biosphere capable of supporting the increasing population.
By 2611 there were two major caverns inside Tehama; and its small companion had been reduced to a sable lump two hundred and fifty metres wide, with a silver-white refinery station, almost as large, clinging to it barnacle-fashion.
The Villeneuve’s Revenge jumped into an emergence zone a hundred and twenty thousand kilometres away, and began its approach manoeuvres. After months tending the starship’s ageing, failure-prone systems, Erick Thakrar was grateful for any shore time. Shipboard life was one long grind, he’d lost count of how many times he’d falsified the maintenance log so they could avoid CAB penalties and keep flying. There was no doubt about it, the Villeneuve’s Revenge was operating dangerously close to the margin, both mechanically and financially. Genuine independence was proving an elusive goal; Captain Duchamp was in debt to the banks to the tune of a million and a half fuseodollars, and charters were hard to find.
Some small part of Erick felt sorry for the old boy. Commercial starflight was a viciously tough business, a tightly woven web of large cartels and monopolies that resented the very existence of independent traders. Starships like the Villeneuve’s Revenge forced the major carrier fleets to keep their own prices down, reducing profits. They retaliated with semi-legal syndicates in an attempt to lock out small ships.
Duchamp was an excellent captain, but his business acumen was highly questionable. His crew was loyal, though, and Erick had heard enough stories of past missions to know they had few qualms about how they earned money. If he wanted to, he could have had them arrested within a week of coming on board—neural-nanonics recorded conversation was admissible evidence in court. But he was after bigger prizes than a worn-out ship with its loser crew. The Villeneuve’s Revenge was his access code to whole strata of illegal operations. And it looked like Tehama was going to be the start of the game.
After docking at the asteroid’s non-rotating axis spaceport, four crew members from the Villeneuve’s Revenge descended on the Catalina bar in the Los Olivos cavern, the first to be dug, a cylindrical hollow nine kilometres long and five in diameter. The Catalina was one of the spaceport crew bars, with aluminium tables and a small stage for a band. At three in the afternoon, local time, it was almost dead.
The bar was a cave drilled into the cavern’s vertical cliff-face endwall, one of thousands forming an interconnected cave city, producing a band of glass windows and foliage-wrapped balconies that encircled the base of the endwall. Like an Edenist habitat, nobody lived on the cavern floor itself, it was a communal park and arable farm. But there the resemblance stopped.
Erick Thakrar sat at an alcove table near the balcony window with two of his shipmates, Bev Lennon and Desmond Lafoe, and their captain, Andrй Duchamp. The Catalina was near the top of the city levels, giving it a seventy-five per cent gravity field, and a good view out into the cavern. Erick wasn’t impressed by what he could see. The axis was taken up by a hundred-metre diameter gantry, most of which was filled by the thick black pipes of the irrigation-sprinkler nozzles. It was ringed at two hundred and fifty metre intervals by doughnut-shaped solartubes that shone with a painful blue-white intensity. They lacked the warm incandescence of an Edenist habitat’s axis light-tube, which was dramatically illustrated by the plants far below. The cavern floor’s grass shaded towards the yellow, while trees and shrubs were spindly, missing their full complement of leaves. Even the fields of crops were hungry looking (one reason why imported delicacies were so popular and profitable in all asteroid settlements). It was as though an unexpected autumn had visited the tropical climate.
The whole cavern was cramped and clumsy, a poor copy of a bitek habitat’s excellence. Erick found himself thinking back to Tranquillity with nostalgia.
“Here he comes,” Andrй Duchamp muttered. “Be nice to the Anglo , remember we need him.” The captain came from Carcassonne, a die-hard French nationalist, who blamed the ethnic English in the Confederation for everything from failed optical fibres in the starship’s flight computer to his current overdraft. At sixty-five years old his geneered DNA maintained his physique in the lean mould which was the staple criterion of the space adapted, as well as providing him with a face that was rounded all over. When Andrй Duchamp laughed, everyone in the room found themselves smiling along, so powerful was the appeal; he had the same emotional conviction as a painted clown.
Right now he put on his most welcoming smile for the man sidling anxiously up to the table.
Lance Coulson was a senior flight controller in Tehama’s Civil Astronautics Bureau; in his late fifties, he lacked the political contacts necessary to gain senior management ranking. It meant he was stuck in inter-system tracking and communications until retirement now; that made him resentful, and agreeable to supplying people like Andrй Duchamp with information—for the right price.
He sat at the table and gave Erick Thakrar a long look. “I haven’t seen you before.”
Erick started recording his implant-enhanced sensorium directly into a neural nanonics memory cell, and ordered a file search. Image: of an overweight man, facial skin a red tinge of brown from exposure to the cavern solartubes; grey suit with high circular collar, pinching the neck flesh; light brown hair, colour-embellished by follicle biochemical treatments. Sound: of slightly wheezy breathing, heartbeat rate above average. Smell: sour human sweat, beads standing out on a high forehead and the back of chubby hands.
Lance Coulson was nerving himself up. A weakling ruffled by the company he kept.
“Because I haven’t been here before,” Erick replied, unyielding. His CNIS file reported a blank, Lance Coulson wasn’t a known criminal. Probably too petty, he thought.
“Erick Thakrar, my systems generalist,” Andrй Duchamp said. “Erick is an excellent engineer. Surely you don’t question my judgement when it comes to my own crew?” There was just enough hint of anger to make Lance Coulson shift round in his seat.
“No, of course not.”
“Excellent!” Andrй Duchamp was all smiles again; he clapped Lance Coulson on the back, winning a sickly smile, and pushed a glass of Montbard brandy over the scratched aluminium slab to him. “So what have you got for me?”
“A cargo of micro-fusion generators,” he said softly.
“So? Tell me more.”
The civil servant rolled the stem of his glass between his thumb and finger, not looking at the captain. “A hundred thousand.” He slid his Francisco Finance credit disk across the table.
“You jest!” Andrй Duchamp said. There was a dangerous glint to his eyes.
“There were . . . questions last time. I’m not doing this again.”
“You’re not doing it this time at that price. If I had that kind of money
do you think I would be here crawling to a tax-money leech like you?”
Bev Lennon put a restraining hand on Duchamp’s shoulder. “Easy,” he said smoothly. “Look, we’re all here because money is tight, right? We can certainly pay you a quarter of that figure in advance.”
Lance Coulson picked up his credit disk and stood up. “I see I have been wasting my time.”
“Thank you for the information,” Erick said in a loud voice.
Lance Coulson gave him a frightened look. “What?”
“That’s going to be enormously useful to us. How would you like to be paid? Cash or commodities?”
“Shut up.”
“Sit down, and stop fucking about.”
He sat, checking the rest of the tables with twitchy glances.
“We want to buy, you want to sell,” Erick said. “So let’s stop the drama queen tactics, assume you’ve shown us what a tough negotiator you are, and we’re all shitting bricks. Now what’s your price? And be realistic. There are other flight controllers.”
He overcame his agitation for just long enough to shoot Erick a look of one hundred per cent hatred. “Thirty thousand.”
“Agreed,” Andrй Duchamp said immediately. He held out his Jovian Bank disk.
Lance Coulson gave a last furtive glance round before shoving his own disk in Andrй’s direction.
“Merci , Lance.” Andrй’s grin was scathing as he received the datavised flight vector.
The four crewmen watched the civil servant retreating, and laughed. Erick was congratulated for calling the other man’s bluff, Bev Lennon fetching him half a litre of of imported Lьbeck beer.
“You had me panicking!” the wiry fusion specialist protested as he dropped the tankards down on their table.
Erick took a sip of the icy beer. “I had me panicking.”
It was going well, they accepted him, reservations (and he knew some still had them) were fading, breaking down. He was becoming one of the lads.
Along with Bev Lennon and Desmond Lafoe, the ship’s node specialist, a brawny two-metre-tall bear of a man, Erick spent the next ten minutes talking trivia while Andrй Duchamp sat back with a blank expression reviewing the vector he had just bought.
“I don’t see any problem,” the captain announced eventually. “If we use a Sacramento orbit to jump from we can rendezvous any time in the next six days. Fifty-five hours from now would be the ideal . . .” His voice trailed off.
Erick turned to follow his gaze. Five men wearing copper-coloured one-piece ship-suits walked into the Catalina bar.
Hasan Rawand caught sight of Andrй Duchamp as he was about to sit at the bar. He tapped Shane Brandes, the Dechal ’s fusion engineer, on the side of his arm and flicked a finger in the direction of the master of Villeneuve’s Revenge . His other three crew-members, Ian O’Flaherty, Harry Levine, and Stafford Charlton, caught the gesture and turned to look.
The two crews regarded each other with mutual hostility and antagonism.
Hasan Rawand walked over to the window booth table, his crew right behind him. “Andrй,” he said with mock civility. “So nice to see you. I trust you have brought my money. Eight hundred thousand, wasn’t it? And that’s before interest. It has been seventeen months after all.”
Andrй Duchamp gazed straight ahead, his hands cupping his beer tankard. “I owe you no money,” he said darkly.
“I think you do. Cast your mind back; you were carrying plutonium initiators from Sab Biyar to the Isolo system. Dechal waited in Sab Biyar’s Oort cloud for thirty-two hours for you, Andrй. Thirty-two hours in stealth mode, with freezing air and iced food, pissing into tubes that leaked, not even allowed a personal MF player in case the navy ships picked up its electronic emission. That’s not nice, Andrй; it’s about as close as you can get to a Confederation penal colony without being shot down to the surface in a drop capsule. We waited for thirty-two hours in the stinking dark for you to show so we could take the initiators in, doing your dirty work for you and carrying all the risk. And when we got back to Sab Biyar what did I find?”
Andrй Duchamp grinned round at his own crew, trying to brazen it out. “I’m sure you’ll tell me, Anglo .”
“You went to Nuristan and sold the initiators to one of their naval contractors, you Gallic shithead ! I was left trying to explain to the Isolo Independence Front where their nukes had gone, and why their poxy rebellion was going to fail because they hadn’t got the fire-power to back up their demands.”
“You can show me the contract?” Andrй Duchamp asked mockingly.
Hasan Rawand glared down at him, lips compressed in rage. “Just hand over the money. A million will see you clear.”
“To hell with you, Anglo filth. I, Andrй Duchamp, owe nobody money.” He stood up and tried to barge past the Dechal ’s captain.
It was the move Erick Thakrar was waiting for and dreading. Sure enough, Hasan Rawand shoved Andrй Duchamp back in the booth. The back of the older captain’s knee struck a seat which almost tipped him off balance. He recovered and launched himself at Hasan Rawand, fists flying.
Desmond Lafoe rose to his feet drawing a frantic gasp from Ian O’Flaherty when his size, weight, and strength became apparent. Huge hands reached forward, and Ian O’Flaherty was jerked off his feet. He kicked out wildly, toecap striking Desmond Lafoe’s shin. The giant merely grunted, and then threw his victim across the room. He landed awkwardly on one of the aluminium tables, his shoulder taking the brunt of his momentum before he crashed down backwards onto a pair of chairs.
Erick felt a hand close around the neck fabric of his ship-suit. It was Shane Brandes who was hauling him out of the booth; a forty-year-old with a bald head and small gold earrings, smiling with ugly anticipation. The unarmed combat file in Erick’s neural nanonics went into primary mode. His instinctive thought routines were superseded by logic-based patterns, calculating inertia and intent with an ease surpassing any kung fu master. Nanonic supplement boosted muscles powered up.
Shane Brandes was surprised how easy it was to pull his opponent out of the booth. Gratification became alarm when he kept on coming. Shane had to backstep to keep balance, his own neural nanonics assuming command of his mass positioning. He cocked a fist back to smash into Erick’s face, only to have a nanonic warning blare in his mind as Erick’s forearm swung up with incredible speed. His punch was blocked, arm chopped painfully to one side. A furious kick to Erick’s groin—his knee nearly fractured from the impact of the counter-kick. He reeled to one side, banging into Harry Levine and Bev Lennon, who were locked together.
Erick slammed an elbow into Shane’s ribs, hearing bone break. He let out an agonized grunt.
The unarmed combat file said that speed was essential, take out your opponent as soon as possible. His neural nanonics analysed Shane’s movements, the half twist as he clutched at his ribs, bending over. The motion was projected two seconds into the future. Interception points were computed. A list materialized in his consciousness, and he selected a blow that would cause temporary incapacitation. His right leg shot out, booted foot aiming for a patch of empty air. Shane’s head fell into it.
A threat assessment sub-routine shifted his peripheral senses into priority focus. Andrй Duchamp and Hasan Rawand were still battering away at each other on the side of the booth’s table. Neither was inflicting much damage in the confined space.
Harry Levine had got Bev Lennon into a head lock. The two of them were on the floor, squirming round like theatrical wrestlers, sending chairs spinning. Bev Lennon sent a flurry of elbow jabs into Harry Levine’s stomach, attempting to knock his navel into his spine.
Stafford Charlton obviously had a boosted musculature. He was standing in front of Desmond Lafoe, landing blow after blow on the big man, arms moving with programmed efficiency. He had almost doubled up from the pain, his right arm hung limply, the shoulder broken. Blood ran out of his flattened nose.
Ian O’Flaherty rose behind Desmond Lafoe, berserk loathing contortin
g his face, a pocket fission blade in his right hand. With his enhanced retinas on full amplification, the yellow haze emitted by the activated blade dazzled Erick for an instant. The threat assessment sub-routine activated the defensive nanonic implant in his left hand. A targeting grid of fine blue lines flipped up across his vision. A rectangular section flashed red, and wrapped itself around Ian O’Flaherty, adapting to his movements like elastic thread.
“Don’t!” Erick Thakrar shouted.
Ian O’Flaherty had already raised the blade high above his head when the shout came. In his wired state he probably wouldn’t have obeyed even if he heard. Erick saw the muscles in his lower arm begin to contract, the knife quivered as it started on its downward slash.
The neural nanonics program reported that even with boosted muscles Erick couldn’t reach Ian O’Flaherty in time. He made his decision. A small patch of skin above the second knuckle of his left hand dilated, and the implant spat out a dart of nanonic circuitry, barely as large as a wasp stinger. It struck the bare skin of Ian O’Flaherty’s neck, penetrating to a depth of six millimetres. The fission blade had already descended twenty centimetres towards Desmond Lafoe’s broad back. As soon as it sensed it was buried inside the flesh, and its momentum was spent, the dart sprouted a fur of microscopic filaments. They quested round on a preprogrammed search pattern for nerve strands, tips wriggling between the close-packed honeycomb of cells. Ganglions were located, and the sharp filament tips forced their way through gossamer membranes sheathing the individual nerves. At this time the knife had descended twenty-four centimetres. Ian O’Flaherty’s right eyelid gave an involuntary twitch at the small sting from the dart’s entry. The dart’s internal processor analysed the chemical and electrical reactions flashing along the nerves; it began to broadcast its own signal into the brain. His neural nanonics detected the signal at once, but the circuitry was powerless to help, it could only override natural impulses originating from within the brain.
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