by M. D. Cooper
“If you don’t mind,” the salesman said. “I heard you mention dogs in zero-g earlier. Well these Corgis were originally bread as herding dogs, but small with the short legs. They’re real good at kicking off with their hind legs to get after cattle or goats or whatever. Well, that same strength works even better now. I’ve got a vid right over here of the little buggers playing fetch in zero-g. It’s the cutest thing you’ve ever seen, trust me. And talk about protective little buggers. Your onboard security goes down, this little guy will be sleeping with one eye open to keep your family safe. Don’t eat much, either.”
“Look,” Andy said. “I appreciate the info but we’re not getting a dog.”
The edges of Tim’s eyes drooped, his face growing red. Andy knew he was in for a meltdown.
“Tim,” he said. “You need to think about Prince. You don’t want him growing up on a ship, do you? Dogs need space. They need to be able to run around and play. There’s space here or on Mars or even back on High Terra, but not on the Worry’s End.”
“You made us grow up on the ship,” Tim said, tears in his eyes. “I want him. I want him for Cara…for her birthday.”
Andy stopped. “For Cara?” he asked.
Tim struggled to keep hold of the apparently patient dog and wipe his sniveling nose. “For her birthday. You said we were going to find her something but you forgot. I want to get her Prince. Only his name isn’t going to be Prince. It’s going to be Em, for Emily Dickinson.”
Andy found himself looking into the puppy’s brown eyes. He had long eyelashes that made him look sleepy. Em held still for a second, gazing back at Andy, before struggling to nose under Tim’s chin. One ear pointed upright for a second, showing what he would look like as an adult, before flopping back over. Tim giggled as Em licked his nose.
“You a freighter?” the salesman asked.
Andy glanced at him. “What?”
“You look like a freighter. Maybe a standalone? We see a lot of folks coming in looking for a companion on those long hauls. This little guy will be a good friend, trust me. He’s a loyal breed. Never let you down.”
Behind Tim’s head, the crowd parted for a second to show the white facade of a Heartbridge clinic on the other side of the corridor. A small black dome above the entrance was certainly a surveillance sensor.
Andy’s heart started hammering and he swallowed. He forced his gaze back to Tim and then the salesman, feeling like he was in the midst of making a mistake. He focused on Tim’s face, his son radiating hope, sadness, uncertainty.
“Fine,” Andy said. “How much?”
The salesman looked like Andy was saving his life. He named the price. Andy automatically shot back a lower amount and the man’s face went flat.
“Dad!” Tim said. “You can’t bargain for a dog. He’s a person.”
“I want three of those things included in the price,” Andy said, pointing at the potty box.
The salesman clasped his hands again. “Great,” he said.
“Wait,” Andy said, looking past the salesman into the shop. “You sell EV suits for dogs? We’re going to need one.”
The salesman didn’t even blink. “Certainly,” he said. “What color would you like?”
CHAPTER NINE
STELLAR DATE: 09.11.2981 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Eros Passenger Terminal
REGION: 433 Eros, Mars Protectorate, InnerSol
“Welcome to 433 Eros!” the holo of a woman in a bright gold dress called enthusiastically as Brit approached the customs booths. “We hope you enjoy your stay with us.”
Wow, not a holo. That’s a real woman standing there. I bet that dress is uncomfortable.
As far as Brit could tell the dress was actually made of gold, most likely a part of Eros’s whole ‘The Golden Land’ tourism shtick.
Once, before it had been utterly mined away, the Eros asteroid had been one of the richest near-earth objects, containing hundreds of millions of tons of gold, platinum, and aluminum. It also had the distinction of being the first asteroid that humans had ever sent robotic craft to.
From what the ads flashing above the woman proclaimed, part of the original asteroid was still visible deep within the station—for anyone who wanted to go see the few pieces of rock that were left over.
Now the station focused on shipping and commerce. With a similar orbit to Cruithne, it was an ideal stopping point for ships moving cargo from InnerSol to OuterSol. Its current orbit put its aphelion very close to Ceres, and Brit’s examination of the station’s departure logs showed a lot of low-profit cargo moving out to the dwarf planet as a result.
After six days helping reprogram the nav systems on the Piercing Sword—the ice hauler she had taken from Cruithne to Eros—Brit was glad to be anywhere, even a customs check point on a squeaky-clean station like Eros.
She was once again in her green robe, trusting in her armor’s abilities to mask itself—and her weapon—from the security arch over the customs desk. It was risky, though. Eros was a part of the Mars Protectorate, and as such its customs agents could be expected to be devoid of humor.
“Purpose of your visit to Eros?” the woman asked as Brit approached.
There was no need for the agent to ask her name, Brit had already passed a fake set of ident tokens across the Link to the security arch.
“Looking for a new berth,” Brit said with a hint of worry in her voice. “I was caught up in that mess on Cruithne—I told my captain that if he docked there one more time I would be out! Did he listen? No. And there we were, hunkered down under a stairwell for an entire day while the stationmaster advised everyone to shelter in place. A day! Can you believe it?” As she spoke, Brit shifted her voice from worry to indignance, letting her pitch rise to an annoying squawk.
“Cruithne you say, Sarah Jennings?” the agent asked, making eye contact with Brit.
“Yup,” Brit said, sounding worried again. “Sarah Jennings. Is there something wrong with my tokens? I heard that half the people on a place like Cruithne can steal your private tokens just by walking past you. I sure hope that didn’t happen, did it happen? Oh, I’ll kill my old captain if that happened!”
“No, no,” the woman said with a smile that was half pity, half patronizing. “Your tokens are fine. I was just going to ask if you saw any of the fighting on Cruithne.”
“Oh, no,” Brit breathed a long sigh of relief. “Shelter in place, that’s what we did. Under a stairwell. For a day! Did I mention it was for a day?”
“Yes, Sarah, you mentioned that,” the customs agent replied. “I’ve given you a provisional visa until the Piercing Sword ships out—which appears to be three days. If you haven’t secured passage out on another ship by then, you’ll have to leave on the Sword. Sorry, but we can’t take on refugees from Cruithne indefinitely.”
Brit nodded rapidly. “You bet, no problem. Trust me, I’ll find another ship. The Sword is nice and all, but their next stop is out in the Scattered Disk. Sedna of all places. I want to go to Sedna like I want a hole in my head.”
The agent gave a short laugh. “I don’t blame you. Make sure you get the ship you sign on with to log your crew enlistment with the stationmaster’s office.”
“Of course, of course,” Brit said with a rapid series of nods.
“Great. Enjoy your time on 433 Eros. Be sure to see our display of the original asteroid. Next!”
Brit smiled and nodded in response before walking out from under the security arch, glad her subterfuge had held up.
Once out of the customs area, she walked down a long passage and onto Eros’s main international terminal. Crowds of travelers moved through the ten-kilometer-long terminal, a cacophony of sound and visuals reflecting off polished aluminum bulkheads, accented with golden fixtures. Overhead, a holographic sky appeared to go on forever, imagery enhanced by the row of trees growing down the center of the terminal, watered by a bubbling brook that flowed along the edge of the concourse.
Brit made sur
e to walk through the terminal with a look of awe on her face, marveling in the beauty surrounding her until she came to a data kiosk. She could have looked up the ship records she desired over the Link, but that would trace back to poor little Sarah Jennings, and Sarah would have no business seeking berths on the ships contracting with Heartbridge.
However, at a public kiosk, she could pass in a stolen token and mask all of her inquiries under the guise of Norma Stys. Norma was a hard-bitten pilot who had logged tens of thousands of hours in the black. She was just the sort of woman who would look for jobs on the ships Heartbridge had hired. Norma technically wasn’t on station, but Brit knew from experience that public access terminals rarely synced access logs with customs. She should have a few days before someone investigated how someone who had never been on Eros used a kiosk there.
There it was—a ship one would have never expected to find on Eros—the Mortal Chance. It still had its destination logged as Ceres, but the fuel records on Eros confirmed the ship had enough deuterium for a trip clear across Sol. What’s more, it had only a smattering of declared cargo; not enough to warrant pulling away from the station, let alone any distant destination.
The other Heartbridge-contracted ship departing from Eros had left two days ago, when the Mortal Chance had also been scheduled to depart from Eros, but the ship had suffered a drive malfunction and was currently in dry dock.
Curious as to what Heartbridge claimed these ships were hauling, Brit accessed the station’s public contract bid records and found the original postings for the runs. Eros had a strange requirement that all shipping had to be done by posting a contract on a bidding board, and then ships would make bids on the run.
She imagined it had originally been put in place to keep freighter companies from gouging local businesses, but now it was all gamed so the right people got the right contracts.
Brit found Heartbridge’s original postings, and sure enough, on these postings, there were no destinations listed. The omission could be innocent, a company looking to get general quotes for future runs, but it could also be used to attract a certain kind of ship. One whose captain was willing to take a risk for a larger payout. It could also be a sign of a job that was set aside for a certain vessel.
Another noteworthy element of Heartbridge’s postings was that they had been made with a corporate account, a sign that they weren’t necessarily trying to hide anything. They just didn’t want to make the run appear too appealing.
Not that Brit believed that for a second.
Any captain with half a brain would know Heartbridge would burn them in a second if they leaked the real destination of these shipments. Anyone involved with this arrangement was already shady. Which meant Brit didn’t have to play nice—not that she often did anyway.
Brit pulled up the station records on the Mortal Chance, confirming data she had stripped from nav relays on the trip from Cruithne to Eros.
The Mortal Chance was a light freighter carrying home port registries in High Terra, Ceres, and the Jovian Combine—which was interesting in itself. Eros’s ship registry had a recent image of the ship’s captain, a squat woman named Alys Harm who possessed forearms the size of Brit’s thighs, dull-silver eye implants, and crisp orange hair that swept back off her ears.
Closing out her session on the kiosk, Brit layered a series of queries run by innocent little Sarah Jennings overtop those run by Norma Styl. If Eros used low-grade analysis software it would flag the data as a logging error and discard Norma’s activity. If not, it would probably end up in some poor analyst’s queue in a few days where it would sit for weeks.
There was precisely one dive bar on Eros, and it was conveniently located near the maintenance docks where the Mortal Chance was being repaired. When Brit approached her and asked if she was looking for new crew, the captain revealed herself to be tottering drunk. This was not news to Brit. When she had asked after the captain, everyone she spoke with informed her that Alys Harm had been drinking herself into a stupor every day while her ship was in dry dock—not showing much interest in leaving Eros at all.
Word around the docks had been that much of Harm’s crew had left for other ships—not terribly surprising. However, what did surprise Brit—and was even more suspicious—was that Harm still had the Heartbridge job at all. Any other company would have dumped the drunken captain after she missed the initial launch window. That was the business.
Harm’s elbows sat in a puddle of spilled beer that covered most of the round table in front of her. She squinted up at Brit as if her implants were lying to her.
“Crew?” she mumbled, her voice sounding like gravel rolling in a canister. “What do I need more crew for?”
“Heard your navigator and pilot both quit,” Brit said. “I can do both.”
Harm looked around the table and found her mug lying on its side. She waved the empty cup at the bartender. “Suppose you’ll want to be paid twice as much,” she said.
“I ask for what’s fair. I’ve got references.”
“What was your last trip?”
“Kalyke,” Brit said.
Harm snorted. “Kalyke? That’s a hike. Why?”
“That’s where the freight took me.”
“You like long haul?”
“I don’t mind it. I don’t go crazy out there, if that’s what you’re wondering.”
The captain sat up and patted the front of her ship suit, adjusted the solid mass of her chest, then reached into her waistband for a small tube of chewing sticks. She rattled one out, inspected it, and placed it between her teeth.
Once she was done with the tube, she put it back in her belt and looked at Brit with renewed interest. She also appeared sober.
“Why the Chance?” Harm asked.
Brit shrugged. “Heard you need a crew and I need a job. Could also be that station wants you gone and told everyone to send pilots your way.”
Harm gave Brit a steely look before she burst out laughing. “You got some grit there…”
“Sarah,” Brit supplied.
“Sarah, then. Grit. Surprising, since you look all mousy in your green dress you got on there.”
Brit opened the front of her shroud, revealing her armor. “I don’t like to advertise all my skills to everyone around.”
“Well, now you look like a mercenary. You got trouble following you?”
“No more than anybody.”
“That’s a bullshit answer. I’ll check those references. What’s the token?”
“You ready to receive?”
“Send it.”
Brit transferred the token for her specially prepared background documents via the Link. Harm’s face went slack as she checked them over. The chewing stick bobbed up and down in her lips. When she had finished, she nodded.
“All right, so you seem to be who you say you are. What’s your price?”
Brit named an amount fifty percent over the cost of an average pilot.
Harm gave her a hard laugh. “You think you’re offering me a deal but two people can be of more use than one hotshot out in the big dark. Sit down.” Harm motioned toward one of the empty chairs.
Brit took the seat, careful to keep her arms out of the spilled beer.
“Damn it!” Harm shouted at the bartender. “I wanted more beer. Not sly looks. Bring it over here before I pull your spine out your ass!”
The bartender flipped her off and pulled two glasses out from under the bar.
“Don’t look at me like that, girl,” Alys Harm said, casting a cold look back at Brit. “I pay that fool’s rent. You drink?”
“It’s not a vocation.”
“Then what do you do when you’re not piloting and navigating simultaneously, or flying out to the edge of nowhere?”
“I crochet,” Brit said.
“You walk in here wearing that armor under what has to be some pretty fancy tech and tell me your hobby is crochet. You mean like knitting socks and whatnot? You’ll knit me a sweater during th
e long dark?”
“Crochet is not knitting,” Brit said, glancing over as the bartender placed a pint of pale yellow beer in front of her. “You only use one needle with crochet.”
Harm leaned forward to take her beer and sip from its nearly overflowing lip. “You ever stab anyone with one of your crochet needles?” she asked.
Brit raised an eyebrow but didn’t answer. “No,” she said. “There are better tools for that sort of thing.”
Harm’s grin spread from ear to ear. She was starting to look drunk again.
“What do you want to know about the current job?” the captain asked.
“The usual. I see your flight plan had you headed to Ceres, but you’ve been held up awhile for repairs. Do you still have a commission to ship?”
Harm shook her head. “I won’t know until the ship’s ready to fly and I transmit my status. That’s when the employer sends the coordinates and we’ll pick up the cargo prior to the trip.”
“So it’s a cargo here on Eros.”
“Maybe. I don’t know.”
Brit gave her a dubious look. “The job looked good because it was placed by Heartbridge. That’s a respectable company.”
Harm laughed. “If you say so. I didn’t peg you for the naive sort. They’ll pay, if that’s what you’re worried about. As to whether or not the cargo is above board, I can’t say. It could be a bunch of crates full of syringes. It could be a bunch of goo covered in bio-warning tokens. I can’t say until we pick it up. The pay’s good though. I can promise you that. What you just named, thinking you were making a bargain? That was lowball for this kind of job. I’ll pay you twice that and not even bother negotiating. I’ll still find myself a pilot, too.” She took a long pull on her beer and set the mug down empty, then belched heartily.
Brit wasn’t sure what to make of this woman. The job was a milk run, she wanted too much money, the job was risky and Brit had lowballed. Was the woman just this addled, or did she enjoy messing with people?
“What do you say, Sarah Jennings?” she asked, giving Brit a direct look. “You in? Or have I scared you off? My drive is supposed to be fixed tomorrow, so tonight’s my last few hours to blow out Eros.”
