by D. M. Pruden
I placed a hand on his shoulder and moved my mouth close to his ear.
“I’m sorry,” I shouted to him.
I grabbed the rail for balance and swept his short legs out from under him with my own leg. He fell awkwardly onto the metal catwalk. While he was still confused and fighting to gain a handhold to pull himself up, I bent down and, with all of my strength, I rolled him off the platform into the raging waters. He disappeared from view as he was swept down the spillway. I hoped he was strong enough to stay afloat until he reached the safety he implied awaited us.
Hands seized me and pulled me to my feet to face an angry Skids. A vicious backhand across my jaw caught me off guard and knocked me back against the handrail. Cable grabbed my arms and held them securely behind me to prevent me from following Owen.
“Now you’ve gone and done it, you little bitch,” yelled Skids. He slapped me again on the opposite cheek. Strong hands prevented me from falling.
“I sent you on a simple trick, and you disappeared and took something that doesn’t belong to you.” He struck me again.
“Where is it?”
I tasted blood. Glaring defiantly at him, I replied, “Where’s what?”
Another blow, this time with his fist. My face was numb and stars danced before my closed eyes.
“Don’t play dumb, I know what you have. Give it to me.”
Skids killed a girl once before. She’d stolen something from him. I don’t remember what she took, but he beat her to death, even after she returned it. There was no way I was going to escape this by resisting him.
“I hid it,” I said through swollen lips.
“Tell me where it is.”
“I’ll take you to it.”
He grabbed me by my hair and pulled my head back.
“If you kill me, you’ll never find it. I don’t think your pals in the suits will be too pleased with you, then.”
He released me and took a step back. “If you’re lying to me...”
“Look, I have no idea what the fucking thing is and nobody wanted to fence it. It’s not worth anything to me, so you can have it.”
I had no guarantee that he wouldn’t murder me anyway, but, like Owen’s deck of cards, I could only play with what was available.
“Why did you disappear?”
I explained to him all the events around the dead client and how I came across the object. “I was lost and couldn’t find my way back to Oldon, so I hired the kid to show me the way home.”
Skid’s face slackened as doubt entered his mind. Then he frowned again.
“Why did you run from us?”
“I didn’t know it was you. I thought you were the two suits who followed me. I saw them in the market and tried to get away.”
He weighed my explanation.
“Why did you push your little buddy into the water?”
“He was an annoying pest who was going to get us killed. You knew he had a knife on him, didn’t you? I saved your life, Skids, in case you didn’t realize it.”
He snorted. “Yeah, right. As if that kid coulda hurt me.”
“I didn’t think he needed a chance to try, so I dunked him. I figure you owe me a little consideration for that.”
“Well...maybe. But you still need to hand over the item.”
I’d played the final card of my weak hand. I couldn’t bluff my way any further. I hoped he valued me more alive.
“No problem,” I said. I tried to reach for it, but Cable still held my arms. I looked at Skids and he nodded for his man to release me. I produced a metal tube from my left pocket. He snatched the object from me and examined it carefully.
“It isn’t damaged, or anything,” I said.
Satisfied, he put the cylinder into his jacket. All bets were closed. Now was the time to learn if I played a winning hand.
“Take her back home and clean her up. She’s got some work to do to make up for the last two days. I’ve got some business associates to meet.”
Cable escorted me back the way we’d come, and not a moment too soon. The water was over our ankles and made the trip back to the ladder difficult. I hoped Owen was all right.
♢♢♢
After Cable returned me to the brothel house everybody else expected Skids to follow and resume beating on me. I maintained no concern for my safety, and bided my time in my room. Three days passed without a single word from him. Some thought the Morality Police nabbed him and would soon descend on the house and take us all for moral re-education.
When that didn’t happen they worried the scavies got him. Cable felt particularly guilty when that came up. Still others in the house thought they heard he died in a turf war ambush.
I remained confident none of those things were even close to the truth. I believed he fell into a bad business deal and paid with his life.
Out of my right pocket I produced a metal cylinder, noticeably heavier than the one I gave to Skids. The suits he met with knew more about the device than he did. They would realize when they were duped and they didn’t strike me as the forgiving kind either. I guess karma can be a bitch if she wants to.
I held concerns they might come looking for me, but after the third day I started to relax and believe they did not know about how Owen and I procured a second cylinder. They’d contracted him to retrieve the stolen item from me and...too bad for him. I smiled to myself until my bruised cheeks ached.
With him gone from my life, an open vista lay before me. Cable and all of us girls in the house now enjoyed the opportunity to create our own futures. The prospect frightened everyone.
I returned the metal object to my pocket and my finger brushed against something. I pulled out the business card the old man gave me many weeks before. The name of Walter Bickell stood out on the it, and I recalled his offer to pay for my education. He told me the sky was the limit and I would make a fine doctor or engineer. I liked the sound of doctor. I didn’t have a clue what an engineer did. Whatever I chose, he offered to take me away from Oldon to build a new life. Maybe he was like the fairy godmother in the story I read to Owen.
A tear ran down my cheek as I remembered his cheery face. I worried I killed him by pushing him into the river. Didn’t he say he swam? Or did he only imply it? Did he hope I might be able to swim for the both of us? I wanted to console myself with the notion I saved him from something much worse. No matter how I considered the situation, my thoughts aways came back to the fact I pushed him. If he was dead, it was by my hand.
How could I accept the miraculous offer made to me if I was responsible for the death of Owen? Fate dangled an opportunity of a lifetime before me and my conscience would not allow me to seize it. I needed to learn if he survived.
I wasted almost an hour persuading Cable to return me to the city on his hover bike. I didn’t know where to find the warehouse, so he dropped me at hotel where everything started.
I got lost as I tried to retrace my steps. I searched for recognizable shops and signs; anything indicating I was there before. Everything appeared different and the same, but not familiar. I spent most of the morning turning in fruitless circles before I thought to look above the canyons of the streets.
The Sato office tower loomed over every other building in New London, and served as a landmark for me to base my search upon. In another hour I walked along a road convinced I had been on. I stood on the corner as the crowds of people flowed around me, peering from one end to the other for some familiar sign telling me I was on the right track.
My eyes locked onto some graffiti in an alley way. I ran to it and examined the art work. Buried within the complex layers of multiple artists, untouched and isolated, stood out the symbol Owen explained to me was the tag of his people, the Trogs.
I hurried down the lane to the next street, where I discovered another one. I recalled how Owen used them to guide us around the labyrinth of streets and alleys. Within half an hour they brought me to Draco’s shop. Memories now flooded into me and I more easily ret
raced our steps until I found myself before the wrecked frontage of the warehouse building.
I entered the darkened structure and pulled out the torch I remembered to bring. I nervously followed the winding hallways Owen led me down when we’d first met, eventually emerging into the familiar empty space of the building’s interior.
With anticipation in my heart, I located the grate guarding his secret alcove. I peered through the holes in search of the lantern’s light, but saw only inky darkness. I pulled up the grating and shone my torch inside. There was no sign of Owen’s return.
My beam fell onto his bed and the tattered old teddy bear upon it. Grief overwhelmed me as I crawled to the mattress and hugged the tiny figure to my chest. Tears streamed down my cheeks as I sat in that place, consumed by guilt and regret. The torch dropped from my limp hands to the ground, its beam of light splashing on the wall beside the wooden box. There, in the corner, a dark object caught my attention.
I reached for Owen’s cold and damp magic sack. My tears of grief were transformed into ones of joy, and I couldn’t wait for his return so I could read to him another story.
Throwing Stones
He hated being awakened so abruptly. All that remained of the dream now was her voice, and its tone. Always the tone of her voice was the last tendril of the dream to leave him. The warning tone; the unheard call for help; the sadness.
“Computer, repeat!” he commanded now that he was fully alert, or at least as alert as he could be. After surviving off of ten minute naps for the past three days, Ben wondered how effective he was anyway. It was a good thing he wasn’t operating his survey ship anywhere near the main space lanes or he would have been a danger to everyone out here.
“I said, ‘Proximity alert,’ sleepy head.”
Sometimes Ben regretted programming Gina’s personality into the ship’s AI. At times like this, when he was still waking from one of the dreams of her, it was just too painful to hear her voice being imitated by the AI. And yet, most of the time hearing Gina’s voice helped him; made him feel better. At least, it did when he didn’t feel guilty. Then the voice was a torment.
He made a mental note, for about the fiftieth time, to buy a new AI module for the ship that would allow him to switch to a secondary personality. But he knew that eventually he would make the same mental note again. AI modules were very expensive, and Ben couldn’t afford a frivolous luxury like a second AI personality. He would just have to live with the feelings this one occasionally resurrected.
“Identify,” he commanded tersely.
“Feeling a bit testy today, Ben?” the AI inquired, just a hint of hurt in the voice. The program was too damned good. Before he could reply, it continued,
“Major body detected two thousand kilometres on relative bearing 035 by 076.”
Ben brought the HUD in his nav-glasses online and looked out the cockpit window.
“I don’t see it…”
“Albedo: approximately 0.04; Diameter: approximately 2 kilometres; Mass: approximately 227 trillion tonnes…”
“What? How could be that kind of mass with that low an albedo? No wonder we didn’t see it until we were this close. Is it in the database?”
“Negative database reference. Object is on no previously plotted orbit. It appears to be a transient trojan.”
Ben’s heart skipped a beat and his throat turned dry. Chasing the last transient rock through his claim had ended in disaster. The smaller, more clever voice in his head advised caution. The larger voice inside reminded Ben of the state of his bank account. He swallowed hard. “With that kind of mass…I mean, that might be a lot of metal. Is it inside of our claim?”
“At the moment; it is moving out of our claim at a velocity of…”
“I don’t need the numbers. How long until it crosses the boundary?”
“It will pass out of our claim in less than ten hours. I can give you an exact time estimate if you’d like.”
“No, thanks. Compute an intercept course and initiate burn,” Ben decided to be excited about it.
“Desired time to intercept?”
“As soon as possible. I want to catch that baby before it leaves the claim.”
“Ben, I calculate that we will need four hours to correct its orbit to remain within our claim boundary. That assumes we use all of the remaining trucking engines we have on board at maximum burn. I estimate with two hours to install the engines…”
“I get it.” Ben reached for his helmet, “What kind of gees are we talking about?”
“Based on your last physical we can do three minutes at 50 G. That will give us an intercept in two hours twenty-four minutes, leaving a one hour and thirty-six minute contingency.”
“50 G’s? I used to be able to do 70,” Ben protested.
“You used to be younger and fitter. And for the record, the maximum you have done in the past ten years is 68 G for one minute.”
“Hmmph.”
“Sorry, I didn’t catch that.”
“I said initiate burn. Let’s go get us some money.”
As the AI initiated the interception maneuver, Ben braced himself for the crush of G-force. He didn’t want to admit it, but he was grateful the AI had computed a reduced maximum G-force tolerance for him. At fifty-eight years old, he had spent far too many of the last twenty in zero-g conditions and his physical conditioning showed it.
Before Gina’s death they had both had the sense to limit their time in the asteroid belt. A few weeks in space followed by a couple of months on Terra meant that they could spend as much time with Natalie as possible; give her some sense of a normal family life. At least as normal as parents who owned an asteroid mining claim could give her. If Gina had lived the three of them would probably be working the claim as a family right now.
“Gina, how much is that rock worth?” Shit, did I just call the AI Gina, again?
“Trojans have a large compositional variability. If I assume that it is a typical M-class asteroid, the nickel-iron in it alone will net about two billion credits at today’s price.” Ben was grateful that the AI no longer corrected him when he carelessly called it by Gina’s name. He didn’t think the computer could be embarrassed, but Ben felt foolish.
“However, I am not certain that is a number you should count on. The low albedo suggests a carbonaceous chondrite, possibly even basalt,” the Gina AI continued.
“Great, thanks for bursting my bubble. So, what is your best estimated range for how much that thing is worth?”
“I give it a value range between one hundred thousand to two billion credits, with a most likely value of two point eight five million credits.”
“Wonderful. Best case scenario I retire rich beyond my dreams; worst case we make enough to recover the fuel costs expended to catch it.”
“That is correct, though I believe your estimate of our fuel costs may be low.”
“Thanks for cheering me up,” grumbled Ben.
“You are welcome.” The AI didn’t always recognize sarcasm.
Even though the computer had tried to temper Ben’s expectations, prospect of retirement after this find excited him in a way he hadn’t been in years. Even two million credits was enough to get out of the asteroid mining business. The two billion would be enough to buy a Martian citizenship, an estate and anything else he could imagine; enough to provide for Natalie for the rest of her life. Maybe it might be enough to get her to talk to him again. It could give him the chance he needed to repair their estranged relationship. Maybe money could buy happiness, after all.
Ben felt the press of G force vanish as the fuel burn ended.
“I want to catch some shut eye for the next couple of hours. Steady as she goes, and all that. Wake me when we are on approach, or if anything interesting happens.”
“Gladly, Ben. Pleasant dreams.”
Ben hoped that he had pleasant dreams. Maybe Gina would visit him again. Maybe Natalie might be there too.
♢♢♢
It was
the violent shaking that roused Ben from his sleep. As he opened his eyes and attempted to rub the sleep from them, his hands met resistance of the closed helmet visor. He cleared his head quickly and began to access the situation. The control panel was lit up like a Christmas tree and the red warning light blinked madly. The fact that he couldn’t hear the klaxon that was supposed to accompany it told him what had happened.
“Computer! Report!”
He panicked at the lack of a response until he recalled that he routinely turned off the helmet comm when he slept. That was not, strictly speaking, an acceptable practise in a single occupant ship; it was one of those ‘minor’ infractions that could cost him his pilot license for a few months. But he had enough confidence in the AI to raise the volume on the cabin speakers to wake him.
He turned on the helmet comm. “Computer! Report!” He failed to keep the panic out of his voice.
“We have experienced a hull breach. All cabin atmosphere has vented into space. I have shut down the pressure pumps to retain your air. Tanks are at ten percent capacity and holding pressure. I do not believe that they have experienced any damage.”
“What the hell happened? Debris hit? Micro-meteor?”
“Forward sensors recorded a small mass on high velocity approach before they went offline. I am running diagnostics. There is more extensive structural damage than can be accounted for from a meteor collision.”
“What sort of damage?” Ben sat forward and activated his helmet’s HUD.
“Full diagnostic is pending; major hull breach in forward section; we have lost communications array; forward sensor array; forward thrusters are offline…”
“It’s all in the front. What did we run into? A meteor big enough to do that would have set off an alert.”
“Unknown.”
Ben looked at the forward window of the cockpit. The clear graphine-plastic compound was cracked in several places and there were at least two holes where it most of the atmosphere had been lost. The asteroid loomed large before them.
