The Alliance

by Jason Letts

  Squeezing his eyes closed and quivering, Rion searched his mind for a solution. He didn’t want to get caught and he didn’t want to die, which this unsavory couple probably wouldn’t think twice about. If they both went to the cockpit or the sleeping quarters before raising the ramp, he’d have a chance at making it off the ship. Even if they were in the cabin, he might just surprise them enough to get by.

  Somewhere in his mind was the thought that Wud had lied to him.

  Increasingly angry, Rion vowed to get off the ship and get his revenge. He put his hand on the panel, preparing to slide it open and make a run for it. His arm was about to jerk when he heard the droning sound of the ship withdrawing the ramp. It was too late. He wouldn’t make it in time.

  His mouth opened, allowing a silent wail to escape. He promised to never get caught, never get tricked again if he could get out of this ship. Walking out of the galley and coming clean to the owners seemed like his last resort. Whether they’d eject him during takeoff or some other horrible thing was anyone’s guess. Rion knew enough about the average person in the solar system to know that most didn’t care whether the next person lived or died, especially if they could earn a charge off it.

  Hand again to the panel, Rion prepared to slide it open and throw himself at the mercy of these bootleg clothes dealers. It slid open a smidge when another sound pierced his ears. A siren boomed in rising and falling tones, over and over. Rion cringed. The JKA didn’t have anything like that standard. How could they have been alerted that he was there?

  “What’s that godforsaken noise?” the woman yelled.

  “It’s coming from the spaceport commissioner. There’s some kind of emergency. All ships are grounded and everyone is required to head below the surface into the colony proper until the situation has been resolved.”

  “Can I kill myself first? That seems better than being stuck in a hole with everyone on Mars,” the woman moaned.

  “Nothing’s stopping you.”

  The rumbling of the mechanism controlling the entryway ramp started up again, and Rion sensed that his prayers had been answered. Footsteps banged on the surface as the couple exited, still unaware that someone had snuck aboard their ship. Whether or not they were consciously planning to continue to air out their ship or not, the ramp remained lowered long enough for Rion to slip out of the galley room and tiptoe toward the opening.

  He passed the boxes of clothes and considered grabbing one, but the only boy big enough to make use of them was Wud. Not worth the effort.

  The wrappers crinkled in his pockets, and he’d barely set foot on the floor before he knew some of the food had been mushed beyond recognition, but he continued to creep along down the tunnel behind the couple. This was the first Rion had seen of the pair, and he stared hard at them in case they turned back to spot him. The woman had a mound of platinum blonde hair on her shoulders. The man carried a well-built torso on two spindly legs.

  They all headed through the tunnel toward the terminal, which had a swarm of people milling through it, more than Rion could’ve imagined were in the entire spaceport. People were elbow to elbow, and the couple from the ship, comfortable that their ship would be fine as long as they retained the necessary signature keys to fly it, disappeared into the crowd heading for the underground colony.

  Wud was nowhere to be found, making Rion wonder whether or not he should follow the procession or go looking for that cheat. Blending in seemed preferable after his narrow escape, and he continued in the direction of everyone else while hugging the wall. The alarm continued to blare intermittently throughout the tube snaking along the planet’s surface.

  After a dozen paces he joined up with Bailor, who tugged on his arm to signal his presence.

  “They came back a lot sooner than I thought they would. I was almost trapped in there,” Rion said.

  “I know,” Bailor said, and it dawned on Rion that he might’ve been in on the trick.

  “You guys set me up. I was in deep trouble.”

  Rion gave the other boy a piercing look. Bailor had a long, tan face and big eyes. They had plenty of regret in them.

  “It’s Wud’s rule that we can’t give any food to the new recruits, as he calls them. Otherwise, they keep expecting handouts and won’t get their hands dirty. I’m sorry I couldn’t give you anything.”

  Rion peered and shook his head.

  “What about watching me go out there when you knew the ship’s owners would be showing up a second later? How do you feel about that? Those people…‌they would’ve thrown me in the trash compactor.”

  “I didn’t know, OK?” Bailor pleaded. “Wud told me to meet him there and I had no idea it was so he could show off how he paid you back for hitting him. I feel really bad about it.”

  Rion’s anger continued to simmer.

  “But you didn’t feel bad enough to do anything to help.”

  “I pulled the alarm. The port inspectors’ll know I did it from footage they record at the terminals. I’ll need to lie low for a few days or they’ll put me away.”

  Rion was taken aback and immediately regretted pursuing such a hard line against Bailor, who he realized had gone to extreme measures to get him out of the jam.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have accused you.”

  Bailor brought a smile to his previously worried face.

  “If we don’t look out for each other around here, no one will. Wud might not understand that, but I do. What’s your name anyway?”

  “Rion Istlegaard,” he said.

  “I’m Bailor Pu. You really don’t think your parents meant to leave you here? You think they’ll be back?”

  Rion sighed as they turned a corner. The tunnel began to descend underground. Their view of the bubble and the stars above vanished in favor of regularly spaced light fixtures and advertisements beamed against the walls and ceiling.

  “I don’t know anymore,” he admitted. “All I know is that my father was talking to someone before he left me behind.”

  “That was probably one of the port inspectors telling him about the fine for not including you on the manifest form. I still remember my parents sobbing when they told me I needed to stay here for a little while until they could come up with the money. That was last year. They were flying a used Tyche with a bad spectroscope. They could work their entire lives and never save enough to take me back.”

  When Rion thought about his home on Venus, the cadre of ships they owned, and some of the trips they’d been on all the way out to Uranus, he figured his parents must’ve been able to pay the fine if they wanted, even though he didn’t know the amount. It didn’t seem like a good idea to say that to Bailor.

  “My dad just got in his ship and left.”

  Bailor kept his lips tight and tilted his head down.

  They continued on through the tunnel, which became progressively darker, until it ended at a massive cavern larger than a sports arena. There were thousands and thousands of people inside. That nearly all of them were adults made it difficult to see what was around.

  “Do you want to see the colony?” Bailor asked with a grin. “Come on!”

  Grabbing his sleeve, Bailor dragged Rion through the crowd and all the way across the cavern. It felt like they were running forever, and Rion had no clue what exactly he should be expecting to see. The cavern wall around the tunnel receded behind, but up ahead there was more and more open space. Finally, they pushed through a small cluster of people and came to a thick red railing.

  “Wow,” Rion said, trying to take in the entire view of the bustling city carved into the planet’s interior. People streamed down walkways like octopus legs to the streets below. Shops and homes were stacked high in front of them. Up above, lights and air filters worked nonstop to make the place inhabitable.

  “To be honest, there are some really nice places in the colony, especially the closer you get to the regent’s castle, but what you’re seeing right in front of you isn’t one of them. Yo
u’re as likely to get stabbed as you are robbed down around there. And the nice places, if you don’t belong there they boot you out pretty quick with plenty of bruises to take with you. That’s why we stay in a docking bay that has been abandoned because of structural deficiencies. All we have to worry about is getting caught.”

  Rion shifted his attention from the grand view to the people around him. There were so many that the odds of finding the man with the beard and belt buckle that had been talking to his father seemed impossible. But he had to find out why he’d been left behind and if his father was coming back.

  They spent a few minutes surveying the crowd until Rion spotted someone in a spaceport uniform walking along in the cavern. If Bailor said his dad had been talking to one of the inspectors, it was possible this man in uniform would be able to help him. His nice clothes would be enough to strike the right impression and get the information he wanted.

  “I’m going over to that guy,” he announced. Bailor’s eyes went wide.

  “I can’t go with you. They’ll be on the lookout for me. That’s what he might be doing right now. I’d better get back to docking bay thirty-seven.”

  Bailor slipped in among the grounded travelers and disappeared, leaving Rion all alone to pursue his only lead on what his father was doing. He caught up to the uniformed man quickly enough, but getting his attention was a more challenging matter.

  “Excuse me, ’scuse me,” Rion said, finally resorting to yanking on the fabric along his side.

  “What do you want?” the man said impatiently enough to startle Rion. Swallowing, Rion spat it out.

  “I’m looking for one of the port inspectors. I was talking to him about the new line of Upgarry transports and I wanted to ask him another question,” he said.

  The man sighed and looked up. It seemed like he’d been working for days straight through without sleep.

  “I don’t know, kid. We’ve got a lot of stuff to do. Just forget about it,” he said, turning to move on.

  “Please,” Rion begged, lunging forward and grabbing his hand. “He’s got a white-trimmed beard and a really big belt buckle. I want to find him.”

  “Does it look like I’ve got a belt buckle on my uniform? I’m an inspector and nobody does,” the man replied, deflating Rion’s hopes.

  When Rion dropped his arms, some of the food came loose inside his clothes. The man seemed to notice a lump shifting and took another look at the boy with fresh, scrutinizing eyes.

  “Where are your parents?”

  “My dad’s right over there,” Rion said as fast as he could, feeling a sudden rush of panic swell up within him. He pointed to a swarm of people and faked a smile.

  The inspector pursed his lips.

  “You should stick close with him,” he said, stooping down a little to impart some gravity. “It’s for the best.”

  Rion froze as he watched the inspector talk, not because of what he said but the motions his lips made to say it. He knew then without a shred of uncertainty that his father wouldn’t be coming back, because he’d said the exact same thing right before he got in his ship to leave. It’s for the best.

  CHAPTER 2

  “A girl?” Rion asked as if he couldn’t possibly have heard right.

  “Yeah, a girl was left behind and is all alone in one of the docking bays,” Bailor said, sharing the news with both enthusiasm and trepidation.

  Rion could understand the mixed sentiment. In the three years that he’d been on Mars, a handful of girls had been abandoned because of the manifest trick. One got stuck in an exhaust shaft on only her third break-in and had been burned alive during takeoff. Another couldn’t bring herself to steal, and despite handouts from the boys, she died of some mysterious causes, likely a mix of malnutrition and illness. A few hung around for a few weeks or months only to end up in one of the slums’ many whore houses. Rion spotted one once. She was nearly unrecognizable, dead in another manner of speaking.

  A girl hinted at grim things to come. As many boys died in that time, but they weren’t as memorable.

  He’d been lying in the short storage space alongside the edge of the condemned docking bay where his bed was. Pushing open the grate, he rolled out and joined Bailor and a couple of the other boys to make their way over to their newest ill-fated recruit. Rion always tried to think of something to say that would save them from the life he had to lead, but as far as he could imagine, there was no way out that would be any better.

  Wud stood around the corner from a tunnel. Lately he’d begun treating the girls much differently than the boys who showed up, though no one had been treated as badly as Rion had been. The two were forced to live and work together, not enemies but certainly not friends. The older boy had squirted some juice in his blond hair and was attempting to mold it into something appealing.

  “Come on,” Wud said at last, ready to lead the other boys around the corner.

  The girl, crouched down, looked like she was either tying her shoes or preparing to take off for a leap. She raised her head the instant they came into view, giving them a glimpse of hair and eyes that were both darker than black space.

  Rion found it was a good idea to appease Wud when it came to some of his rules. One of them was to let him do all the talking when it came to approaching the new orphans. The girl stood up and crossed her arms over her middle, something that most of the girls did, like a defense mechanism. She was probably nine or ten years old, lanky and nearly as tall as Wud. Her sheer athletic wear with bright yellow stripes wouldn’t do her any favors when it came to hiding, and the close cut meant she’d grow out of it in a heartbeat.

  Wud put on his winningest, most sympathetic smile as he sidled up to her.

  “I’m so sorry this happened to you. Nobody understands what you’re going through better than I do. My name’s Wud Tenny. Let me help you figure this out.”

  Rion stared off into the vacant docking bay at the imprints in the dirt of a Voidjet K1’s landing gear. A beautiful ship by any measure and not too common, he was sorry not to have seen it. It would’ve been much more interesting than the conversation between Wud and the new girl that was about to unfold.

  They all knew the script by now. Wud would offer her something to eat, tell her about their harsh realities in the rosiest way possible, and offer to give her the honor of tagging along with him on missions.

  “Help yourself, you fat sack of lard.”

  Rion laughed, his attention snapping back as he tried to figure out if the girl had said that or if he’d only heard it in his most entertaining daydreams. But the other boys were laughing too, and the girl pushed out of their circle and strode through the tunnel, leaving them all in the dust. The way Wud’s mouth hung open was priceless.

  Where she went, none of them knew. Rion wondered if she was gone for good. It was time to begin the process of performing another calculated intrusion into another lucky ship. They weren’t going to rob themselves.

  By now Rion had a routine when it came to selecting his targets. It took time, but it minimized the risk and usually kept the storage bin by his bed packed.

  It started with a walk through the entire spaceport. Bailor took notes on the different options as Rion extemporized about ship designs and what they were commonly used for.

  A few other boys tagged along, those who found picking up after their scraps to be the path of least resistance when it came to gathering food. These boys kept eyes directly on Rion’s top picks in order to learn anything about the owners’ habits or hear something about their plans.

  While the other boys were spread throughout the port, Rion and Bailor used a stolen tuner to listen in about departure times. A computer terminal would’ve made that work much more expedient, but the one in their bay was in disrepair and only functioned at random intervals. Others were often watched or in heavy use. As it was, announcements about when specific docking bays would be available for new arrivals came every few hours.

  Once the field reports came i
n, a specific ship to rob was identified, and the knowledge of a departure time gave them a window to work with, they huddled around to formulate their plan of attack.

  “You guys take all the fun out of it,” Wud hollered at them as he came back with arms full of honeydews.

  “That’s what happens when you don’t think things through,” Rion said, not paying him much mind. “You come back with nothing but melons.”

  “Which one are we going for this time?” Bailor asked. He was as trusty a companion as Rion could’ve imagined, and having him around was a lifesaver on multiple occasions.

  “The Espirit 2.2 in bay ninety-six,” Rion said.

  “I could’ve told you we’d go after that one yesterday,” a boy named Pietro complained. “Sometimes it seems like that’s the only ship we rob.”

  Rion held his tongue and looked behind him to see if Wud caught wind of the discontent.

  “That’s because it’s the easiest to break into and the long range of the vessel means it’s likely to have a lot of food and other supplies stored away. Now let’s talk about the specifics,” Rion said.

  “We already know it all. Use a Martian lasso to swing up to the roof. Go to the storage container accessible from the exterior that’s hardly ever locked because it’s high and outside, open it, climb through the interior opening that no one bothers to lock because it’s inside, take only a sack’s worth of items, and then beat feet,” Pietro said.

  Rion scratched his chin, feeling like some of his thunder had been stolen. Perhaps their operation had become a little too routine. But he appreciated not having any surprises.

  “Right. Let’s go do it then,” he said, leading them off into the spaceport.

  A Martian lasso was what they called a special gadget that one of the boys had invented before Rion arrived. A retractable line attached to a magnet, it made climbing a snap. The Espirit 2.2 was a tall ship anyway, and even with the lasso the only spot to climb into was the end of the wingtips that dipped slightly from the base.