Counterweight

by A. G. Claymore

  Rick rose to his feet and, seeing no complications, jogged into the clearing to retrieve his arrows. Even in death, they couldn’t have spicewood they hadn’t paid for, and the arrows would raise questions. Far better to let nature take its course.

  He wiped the shafts on a smuggler’s shirt before rinsing them off with some of his drinking water. He reached into his pouch and pulled out a salve laced with chimera urine, applying it to the two shafts. With a quick scan of the ground to ensure he hadn’t dropped anything, he turned and loped off into the undergrowth to retrieve the springbuck he’d shot earlier.

  He was halfway there when he heard the first snarls of a chimera. In this region, exposed humanoid blood would draw them within minutes. If you scratched yourself and didn’t have any salve to cover the smell, you’d be better off cutting your own throat. Weighing just over eight hundred kilos, the chimera was a four-legged predator covered in thick, protruding chitinous scales that acted as heat sinks. Though reptilian in appearance, they gave birth to live young and fed them from mammary glands.

  They loved the smell of humanoid blood above all other prey for some reason, and Rick knew he’d have an easier than usual time returning home with the slightly-bloody but heavily salved beast over his shoulder, now that they were distracted. He would have nothing to worry about from the smugglers either. Nothing would be left of the two men but teeth, and their captain could hardly ask the Humans about two men he’d sent to steal wood.

  Boxing Clever

  Tsekoh, Capital of Chaco Benthic

  Callum shuffled away from the rocky outcropping. Despite millennia of undersea mining operations, the suits were still the same clunky designs, and he had to move away from the rocks in an awkward hopping motion. The faster he moved, the more the energy shielding hazed around his head and it always scared the hell out of him.

  If the shield ever failed, he probably wouldn’t even have time to notice it as the pressure would increase a thousand fold, killing him with instant mercy. The thought was a comfort that gave him cold sweats in the night.

  He came to a stop next to a co-worker just as a light thump punched at his suit and his shield hazed again. They both looked back at the tumbling rocks until a chime sounded in their helmets. Cal looked at the communication display projected on the shield to his right before waving the other man over.

  They grabbed each other’s arms and leaned forward, touching their shields, forcing them together until an opening appeared between their faces with a gentle hiss of air from the slight pressure difference between the two. They continued pushing until the electromagnetic plates at the front of their neck collars made contact, locking them together.

  The old hands called it face time and they usually did it to impress the rookie suit drivers. It was a good way to talk when the regular comms were down and Cal’s rock fall, triggered by a small prospecting charge, had just buried the last functional repeater in the entire grid.

  “Should be able to talk until shift change,” Belfric muttered, looking up at the bright line where the two head shields intersected, mild concern obvious on his face. “Hells, we probably won’t have a new repeater out this way for months, knowing the company.”

  Belfric was nervous about engaging in face time and Cal grinned with approval. “Let’s hurry up anyway, Bel,” he urged. “A smart operator is one who doesn’t like unnecessary risk.” He glanced meaningfully up at the glowing energy seam. “Don’t want to get my pay docked for a crushed suit…”

  Bel laughed despite his fears. It was one of the great things about C’Al, as everyone here knew him; he had a way of sharing their fears that made his people feel braver. Sure, Belfric was worried about glitching his shield during the risky face time meeting but C’Al was scared too. If the Tauhentan could find it in himself to overcome the crushing menace, so could Bel.

  “So my guy did a clean-up of D’Nei’s locker as soon as his marker expired,” Bel began. “Couple of contraband weapons, some lagweed – no surprise there – and a collection of rather surprising and embarrassing videos featuring your recently deceased planetman and one very well-placed company official.”

  Cal raised his eyebrows. “Male or female?”

  “Female.” Belfric’s gaze narrowed. “You look surprised, C’Al. He didn’t compromise her on orders?”

  A shake of the head. “No. Son of a clone was making up his own ops and exposing us all to risk in the process. You still have the video?”

  “It’s in a planter down on the one-twenty-eight promenade.”

  “Destroy it. I can’t imagine a more dangerous enemy than one with nothing to lose.”

  A slight nod, as though hearing exactly what he’d expected to hear. “There’s one more thing,” Bel added. “A box – spicewood.”

  “So she gave him an expensive gift.” Cal shrugged. “She probably thought she was pulling the strings, giving him credits and trinkets to keep him coming back.”

  “I don’t give two turds what she might have thought,” Bel said mildly. “I want to know where the wood came from; it was fresher than anything I’ve ever laid hands on.”

  “You handled D’Nei’s property?” Cal was alarmed. Everything should have been disposed of quickly and quietly, not passed around like a damned show and tell session.

  “You’re not hearing me, C’Al.” Bel was unperturbed by his leader’s obvious disapproval. “Fresh spicewood. Maybe folks see that kind of thing in a rich city like Xo’Khov where the plantations send what little they manage to grow, but here? Fresh spicewood being given away to someone like D’Nei in return for services on a middle-of-nowhere ball of water like Chaco Benthic?”

  “So what does that mean to us, Bel?” Even after a century and a half pretending to be a Tauhentan, he still sometimes missed what was obvious to the locals and he wasn’t sure what Belfric was getting at.

  “We’ve been seeing fresh spicewood artifacts over the last few months.” Belfric chewed at the inside of his lip as he spoke, indicating that he was thinking the problem through. He looked up at Cal. “There has to be a source of the stuff nearby. Only way to explain it getting smuggled down here.”

  “Smuggling wood?” Cal frowned. “What makes you think it’s not just being brought down openly?”

  “Anyone that has a source is incredibly protective of it. If it was declared on the tether manifest, the company goons would find out and wring the secret out of whoever brought it.” Bel nodded to himself. “Chances are the poor vitro wouldn’t survive the questioning, so the company would just step in and take over the trade.” He touched a finger to the side of his nose. “Remember Qel’Kun,” he intoned solemnly.

  A blank look.

  “Gods! Don’t they teach any Imperial history on Tauhento?”

  “I had other interests when I was younger.” Cal raised a lewd eyebrow.

  A snort. “So did I, but I still had to pass my scans before I could implant a trade.” Bel shook his head. “Qel’Kun was one of the first traders to deal in spicewood, back in the Imperial days. Some say he was the one who found the world where it originally comes from and one of the emperors – one of the guys from near the end, when travel began to collapse – decided he’d get the secret out of the poor bastard. Poor Qel died on the interview table and took his secret with him.”

  “Now I remember,” Cal feigned a dawning recollection. “Hence the famous joke about tight-fisted Ufangians. It started with Qel’Kun preferring to die rather than yield his secret.”

  Now it was Bel’s turn to look confused.

  “Well,” Cal admitted, “you wouldn’t have learned it in a pod session. There was this Ufangian, see, and he was walking along the beach near Xo’Khov when he got too close to a scuttler. Before he knows it, the cursed thing nips three fingers off his right hand.”

  Bel was grinning. He loved a good joke and Cal was glad his own Scottish heritage had exposed him to dozens of ‘cheap’ jokes. It was a simple enough matter to convert the story and add ano
ther layer of realism to his cover.

  “Well, the poor guy is screaming his head off and a patrolman and an off-duty paramedic are both within earshot so they come running. They make a quick search but the fingers are already gone – the scuttler’s dragged them down under the sand for a quick snack.

  “Not to worry, the paramedic says. We’ve had to find Ufangian fingers before. He fishes around in his pocket and comes out with an Iron Emperor, the smallest coin they had back then, and drops it on the sand. Sure enough, up out of the sand come the Ufangian’s fingers to wrap themselves around the coin!”

  “Hah!” Bel’s breath was ripe with the kelp rolls he’d had for his breakfast. “That one from Tauhento?”

  “Not sure,” Cal replied, pretending to give it some thought. “I told it to a Tauhentan once and he’d never heard of it.” No sense in giving Bel anything that could be confirmed as wrong. “Anyway, I’ll have someone look into the wood. Might be worth our time.”

  “Speaking of time,” Belfric cut in with a glance up at the energy seam above them, “we’d better get back to work or the auditors will be all over us at shift end.”

  “No arguments there,” Cal spared a glance up as well. No harm in letting your people know you had fears too. A man with no fear is a man likely to get a lot of folks killed. “See you at the place on seventy-eight after work.” It was the ninth day of the week, so the dinner was also a catch-up session with Cal’s other cell leaders.

  “Not that place that serves Bulian Khat?” Bel shuddered. “You know I hate that translucent crap!”

  “Ah, the sacrifices we make,” Cal intoned melodramatically as he shut off the magnetic plate on his collar and pushed away.

  He wasn’t entirely happy about digging into D’Nei’s background. They’d managed to sever their connection cleanly. Any inquiries would run the risk of discovery. He wondered whether he should have the incriminating recordings picked up as leverage with D’Nei’s former paramour but he dismissed it almost immediately. She may not even have been the source of the box and the whole idea had disaster written all over it.

  Bel had said there were other spicewood articles showing up in the city. Their search didn’t have to jump off from D’Nei’s box. They simply had to find another item to be curious about. That was safe enough.

  And it was well worth the minimal risk. Spicewood was incredibly valuable. A decent source was definitely worth passing on to the Alliance.

  He grinned to himself as he reached the runabout unit that came with his prospecting designation. He knew just the right guy to find out who was bringing in the wood.

  Pariah

  Planet 3428

  Rick sighed as he looked down at the capacitors on the quartermaster’s counter. It was nothing new, but sometimes old insults stung the worst. His ancestor, Commander Alexander Heywood, had elected not to join the mutiny but he couldn’t be left behind to die with the fleet because he was the chief engineer. He’d been forced to come along and now his descendants were the victims of those who’d re-written history.

  All mention of mutiny had been scrubbed from the pod data. Only the memories that justified leaving the fleet were kept. The vaccinations that were supposed to save the Humans of the fleet were actually causing the plague itself. The official line from fleet command, insisting that those who survived would be in the majority and that they would then go on to live for centuries was nothing more than a pack of lies.

  Or so the data in the pods would have you believe. Rick was an electrical engineer, like all Heywoods since Alexander, and he knew how the data was structured. The memories implanted by the pods weren’t stored as sounds and visual memories; they were just simple data points. Almost like a text narrative, with the recipient overlaying their own interpretation, filling in the details.

  Someone with the right knowledge could easily alter those memories, but they couldn’t stop the Heywoods and other families like them from passing on their own version of events orally. Rick had always been taught that the vaccinations were killing a small percentage of the recipients. That the survivors did, in fact, live for centuries and that the crew of the Guadalcanal had mutinied.

  Rick had once asked his father why the original crew had bothered to change the data when they must have known how hard it would be to kill the truth. His father had sat quiet for a few moments, looking at his son. “Because they could,” he finally told Rick, “and when the alternative is shame, a palatable lie is easier to believe than an ugly truth. All you need is an excuse, and the altered records are all the excuse folks need to believe.”

  As Rick looked at Ted, the pimple-faced teen who’d dropped the capacitors on the counter instead of just handing them over, he wasn’t the least surprised to find himself fantasizing about beating the smug smile off the little bastard’s smug face. It was simple little insults like this that pushed Rick’s buttons.

  The little jerk would have handed the parts to some of Rick’s staff – they were descended from those who ‘kept the faith’ with their fellow crewmen, but he ostentatiously refused to risk contact with the second engineer.

  It was getting harder to hide his reactions and he hated giving them the satisfaction. Still, he could feel his right hand balling into a fist when it should have just reached out for the parts. It started to draw back, as though tired of its owner’s hesitation and wanting to do some damage.

  A hand clapped down on his right shoulder. “Morning, Rick.”

  He could feel the tension drain from his body. Barry Fletcher had been a good friend for as long as Rick could remember and he was one of the few non-pariah crewmen who treated him with respect, regardless of who was watching. Saying he was non-pariah was an understatement. He was a direct descendant of Will Fletcher, the man who’d led the mutiny, and most folks expected him to take over the captain’s job one day. On 3428, that was as well-born as you could get.

  “Are these part of my order?” Barry grabbed the handful of capacitors and pretended to examine them.

  “No.” Ted waved a hand at Rick. “They’re for engineering.”

  “Ahh.” Barry held out the parts, dropping them into Rick’s hand, before turning back to the young quartermaster’s mate. “My sister asked about you.”

  “Really?” Ted’s eyebrows raised a quarter inch. It was no secret that he was obsessed with Nell.

  “Hmmm? What?” Barry frowned at the young man. “Oh, good Lord, no! I was talking to Rick.” He grinned at his friend. “She thinks she’s being discreet, but she’s as subtle as a good kick in the head. Take my advice, Ricky, and steer clear of her; she’s bad news.”

  He turned back to Ted, ignoring the red blush on the young man’s face. “Ted, where’re the parts for the fire control relays? You knew I was coming by this morning.”

  Ted’s embarrassment channeled itself into anger. “Why are you wasting parts on non-essential systems? Your post is just a hereditary title.”

  “I’m a fire control officer, Teddy.” Barry’s voice lost its humorous notes and a dark edge crept in. “Every generation has maintained the systems against the day that we might need them. Now that we have regular contact with smugglers, it may only be a matter of time before we have to fire those weapons. I don’t plan on being the one who broke the faith and doomed us all.”

  Ted deflated. “I’ll see what I can find,” he muttered petulantly.

  “Those parts we got in trade for wood actually function well with our systems,” Barry continued, ignoring Ted’s attitude. “I’m gonna need a lot more.”

  “The relays?” Ted asked in dismay. “They take a lot more space in our lock-up.”

  “Yeah, well you won’t be hoarding them.” Barry waved a dismissive hand. “I’ll need forty-two hundred relays on the next trade.” He held up a warning hand to stop the young man’s incredulous response. “And we need a life support unit for every twenty relays. Put it on the list and I’ll tell Uncle Al why we need them.”

  Without even waiting f
or an answer, he pulled Rick around and led him back out into the main corridor. “Let’s get some air.”

  They climbed seven decks in silence. The dorsal escape hatch in this section of the ship was left open on a permanent basis, closed only during routine maintenance checks. Three hatches from among the thirty-two that dotted the dorsal surface had failed over the years and each had been laboriously closed by hand and welded shut.

  The two emerged under the thatched canopy that kept the rain from finding its way inside. By unspoken mutual consent, they walked to the forward edge and sat, their feet dangling over the three-hundred-foot drop. A work party approached the massive, open hangar door from the front, looking like a small troop of ants.

  “You were about to do something rash back there, weren’t you?” Barry said quietly.

  “I think I was about to beat the hell out of that kid.” Rick was surprised at how good it felt to say.

  A sigh. “Ted can’t help being stupid. It’s how he was raised.”

  “It’s how everyone was raised.”

  Barry looked over at him. “Everyone?” He raised a dramatic eyebrow.

  “You’re all right, but even you don’t want me around your sister.”

  Barry shrugged. “I think you can do better.”

  “What’ve you got against Nell?”

  “I don’t like the way she treats my best friend.” Barry’s answer sounded like something that had been rattling around in his head for a long time. “She ever acknowledge your existence in public?”

  “I’m more interested in what happens when we’re not in public.” Rick couldn’t help but grin.

  Barry punched him in the arm, hard. “Shut the hell up! I don’t want to hear about that!” He looked genuinely aggrieved. “What if I was hooking up with your sister?”

  “It’d be weird…”

  “See?”

  “Well, she’s more than twenty years older than you,” Rick said, “and I always figured she had better taste than that…” He rolled with the next punch. He’d known it was coming even before mentioning his exploits with Nell and he’d allowed the first one to strike hard because a good friend had to accept the consequences of talking about his buddy’s sister. One was enough, though, because Barry could hit pretty hard.