He limited his abilities around Barry because he had a good five-or-six second lead over him and Barry knew it. They conducted their conversations the old-fashioned way, no subconscious questions, and it had actually led to a stronger bond between the two.
It was almost certainly what had led to the unusual friendship between the two young men. They came from the opposite extremes of their community’s social strata but Barry had always treated Rick with respect.
Now, however, he seemed serious about his sister.
“Rick, even if Nell was knocked up, my dad would deny it was yours and marry her off to someone else before the day was out. There’s no way in hell he’d let you be his son-in-law.”
Rick knew his friend was right, but that didn’t make it any easier to take. Nell was never going to see him as more than a diversion but his own options were slim. The essential staff who had to be forced into joining the mutiny were a small minority and, after five generations, their descendants were pretty much all cousins.
They managed to marry into the neutrals from time to time but even that avenue was rare. Neutrals mostly traced their ancestry back to exchange officers or students from the fleets combat shuttle program. Several hundred of them had been dragged along when the Guadalcanal had left the fleet and they were pretty much free to mix with whomever they pleased.
Still, most neutrals would rather not marry someone like Rick and have to give up status. Status was what determined the kind of quarters you would get, what food you could claim, and what opportunities your children would have to choose from.
And he just couldn’t get Nell out of his head, especially when she displayed such aggressive interest in him when they were out hunting. He thought briefly about heading down to his quarters to find his bow but the weight of the capacitors were a constant reminder that he had work to do.
Probably for the best, work usually cleared his head.
Caution
Tsekoh, Capital of Chaco Benthic
Callum waited at the back of the two-car passenger-mover as the other passengers exited the maglev vehicle. He stepped out onto the platform and pretended to receive a new message, looking down at his hand as new passengers boarded and the short train hummed away, leaving the stink of ozone in its wake.
He pretended to scroll through the imaginary message until his peripheral vision was clear of movement. Then he carried on with his charade for another twenty seconds or so before starting to walk, a casual glance at the news panels giving him a view of the entire platform.
No likely candidates. There were a few waiting for the southbound line, backpackers mostly. Cal grinned. You found them on every planet in the Republic – kids who spent a year or two wandering from world to world, postponing the moment when they would have to get on with life.
The problem here on Chaco Benthic was that they always ran out of money and, if they didn’t have rich parents to buy them a ticket back up to the orbital counterweight, they’d spend the rest of their lives beneath the cold grey waves.
It was relatively affordable to ride down on the tether, but the exit ticket down here in Tsekoh was incredibly expensive. Though it was far from the best-kept secret in the Republic, it helped provide the company with an endless stream of unwary NRW employees and they reserved pretty much every available up-bound kilogram for manganese exports.
If company agents were following him, they certainly wouldn’t do it while disguised as a backpacker. Too easy to notice. That kind of thing might work if they were doing static surveillance – each man covering a zone, handing off the target using coms implants. Static surveillance needed a lot of manpower to work properly and it wouldn’t work in a public transit station anyway. Sooner or later, folks would notice that you weren’t going anywhere.
Cal used a lot of transit stations when running Surveillance Detection Routes. As an undercover operator, he had to act as though he wasn’t trying to defeat enemy surveillance. Constantly looking over his shoulder would have been a dead give-away that he was up to something. An SDR that ran through a transit station gave him the opportunity to stop and check his surroundings without being obvious about it. The fake message made it harder for anyone following him to wait around without becoming obvious.
He exited the station and moved into a medium-sized shopping district. The place was a rabbit warren of side corridors and it would force any surveillance team to close up on him. In this environment, it was far too easy for him to duck down a narrow side alley and disappear.
He stopped to cross the pedestrian traffic, checking behind him as if choosing the best moment to move across the flow – still no evidence of a tail. He darted across and into a media shop that he used from time to time. It had a stair connecting with the next level. He spent a few minutes looking at the wall screens before selecting an old Tauhentan graphic novel and sending the file to his account.
He nodded to the attendant and headed up the stairs, pulling on a welder’s cap and stuffing his jacket into his satchel before reaching the top step. Anyone handing him off to an agent on the next floor would have described what he was wearing. Every little change helped.
He quickly passed through the banks of action & adventure memory screens and exited the store, his chip authenticating the payment for his novel as he walked under the scanner in the doorway. He waved down a magbike cab and gave the driver an address close to the café where he was ultimately headed.
For most of the last century and a half, Cal’s life had been one long series of SDRs. He’d lived as a ghost on eight worlds, never letting his guard down. It was as natural as breathing and he often didn’t even notice when he was doing something purely for the sake of identifying a tail.
He’d definitely had an easier existence back on Earth, but it was the last place he would want to be noticed. Here, he was just another Tauhentan expat, his ancestors cut off from home when the Humans had carved their world out of the Republic.
Back home, if you could even call Earth home anymore, he was Callum McKinnon, the terrorist who’d almost cost Humanity its freedom. He’d been convinced the Dactari threat had been a lie. His parents, two former CIA operators, had become staunchly anti-government and they had taught him everything they knew.
He’d thought the ‘Alien Invasion’ was a UN plot to take over the planet. He’d set up a failed attempt to destroy key equipment at Moffet Field, followed by a spectacular freighter-bomb in the Hudson river that completely destroyed the UN headquarters.
Then he’d gotten pinched in Calgary where he was lying low and working on a construction crew. The two soldiers patrolling the bus station may have claimed he was ‘resisting arrest’ or maybe they didn’t even bother. At least the long recuperation gave him something to occupy his mind while he lay in his tiny, windowless cell.
It was a hell of an eye-opener, to say the least, when Agent Guilderson had brought in a captured Dactari to meet him.
All those people dead in New York and he’d been about as wrong as a person could be…
Once he was mobile, he’d stood in front of a military tribunal where he was sentenced to death. Though officially a corpse, he spent several years working as a carpenter on a small Caribbean research base. The government had wanted him alive on the off-chance that one of his old cronies might try to step into his footsteps, so they hid a tracking chip somewhere on his body and put him to work. He’d helped to build the research facilities that developed the new pitch drives.
Now, fifteen decades later, Cal was surprised at how much he missed that warm humid air.
He ducked reflexively as the magbike operator flew them under a slow delivery unit before weaving through a tangled mess where an accident had just occurred. The occupants of one of the vehicles were staring down into the cold foggy depths of the central atrium with ashen faces. A red pulsing glow indicated an emergency vehicle was down there somewhere.
He was always surprised at the little things that crept up on him. Why should he be
nostalgic about the almost oppressive heat of his former prison? He could hardly be nostalgic about the people; most of them would still like to kill him, even though they now made full use of his skills.
He knew if he were ever captured or killed on one of these worlds, he was completely on his own. Back home they’d probably declare a holiday.
He grinned as the foot plates increased their restraint gravity. Magbike operators were notoriously reckless but they were popular because they were the quickest way to get around in Tsekoh. With the restraint field maxed out, the operator threw them into a right hand roll and nose-dived straight down into the heavy fog that always filled the lower levels during ore processing shifts.
A massive ore carrier flashed past on their right, filthy yellow paint slicked with grimy moisture, and Cal whooped with the thrill of the ride. He knew the operator of the bike had a heads-up display and was just trying to scare his passenger.
Cal was goading him to try harder.
The operator obliged. He headed for the pinch. It was a narrow point in this section of the atrium, only two meters wide for ten levels in either direction and it was the corner of a seventy degree turn. If anyone was coming in the other direction, the heads up display wouldn’t know until it was too late.
They entered the pinch at full speed. No vehicles struck them but a foot grazed off the operator’s helmet as they sped through the narrowest point. A chorus of cheers and shouts followed them out and Cal looked back to see the daredevil who had jumped across the two-meter gap. He was outside the railing, but his friends were holding him by the arms, pulling him in as they disappeared around the corner.
Definitely no sign of being followed. No sane operator would be willing to follow a magbike cab down here. They dropped another five levels and came to a swerving stop at a roughly-cut hole in the railing. It wasn’t a standard debarkation port, but it was left unrepaired in order to reduce congestion at the proper stations.
Cal authorized a twenty percent tip for the driver before hopping over to the pedway – a pretty standard gratuity in return for getting the passenger to his destination in one piece.
He strolled back toward the pinch for a few hundred yards before reaching the café. He walked in to the back, his body shuddering involuntarily from the delicious heat, and he took a table near a rear exit that opened onto a relatively busy hallway. He ordered a couple of signature house drinks before pressing his palm to the glass surface of the table, activating his own little corner of the city’s data hive. He selected the graphic novel he’d just purchased and lifted the display up into the space above the table.
He slowly worked his way through the holographic pages while watching the pedestrians through the café’s open front. He used a spoon to eat the layer of algae at the top of his drink before taking a sip of the heavily-caffeinated beverage. The cooking process burst the cell walls of the algae, releasing their caffeine into the broth. It was a popular post-shift snack that helped keep body and soul together until the evening meal.
A medium-build Ufangian walked in and headed for the table. Cal gave a barely-perceptible nod of approval. Five minutes early. The guy took things seriously and he always made sure he got to a meeting place early to scope out any potential problems.
“Good story?” the Ufangian – Cal didn’t know his name and wanted it to stay that way – asked as he sat down and took a big gooey gulp of the drink that had been waiting for him.
Cal winced. He didn’t mind the algae on its own, and the remaining beverage was palatable enough, but he just couldn’t bring himself to consume the two together like the locals. It worked with his cover, as few Tauhentans followed the local customs.
Cal looked back up at his story and shrugged. “It’s all right.” He didn’t bother to ask if the Ufangian had been followed. He wouldn’t be sitting here if that were the case. “What did you find out?”
A long slurp. He leaned back. “There’ve been a lot of spicewood items showing up in Tsekoh lately. Even down this way, we’ve been seeing smaller trinkets.” He grinned. “Up in the money-levels, folks are showing off some pretty expensive items. Boxes, hairpins, slate covers, vehicle trim…”
Cal nodded. The latest fad among the wealthy corporate elite was spicewood. The only reason for an expensive product to even exist was that it allowed the rich to differentiate themselves from those who weren’t. He’d heard there was even a restaurant up top, near the tether anchor, that had started grilling fish in thin sheets of spicewood.
It was incredibly extravagant, seeing as there were only a few plantations in the Republic that could keep spicewood trees alive and they needed vast amounts of terra-conditioning equipment to eke out a few trunks a season.
It was the first time he’d ever heard of spicewood being used as a consumable. “So where is it coming from?”
The man took another deep drink, following it up with a sigh. “I began tracking it from several different vendors, posing as a backer who had some credits to invest. I ran into a lot of dead ends, of course, but you don’t get the grains without the husks…”
Cal held his tongue. He appreciated the Ufangian’s skill at investigation but the guy had a dramatic streak that was better left un-encouraged. He loved to play up the difficulties in his assignments. Ninety-nine percent of the time, he was a complete sleeper. The rare occasions when Cal had to make use of his abilities were probably the high point of his dreary existence and he liked to make the most of it.
A chuckle. “All right, on to the harvest.” He leaned in toward Cal. “The one commonality in all this is a warehouse, five levels up from here. A place owned by a registered smuggler by the name of G’Maj Tumela. Folks say he bought up an old supply of whole trunks from an estate sale, which is complete eel-droppings of course.”
“It is?” Cal raised an eyebrow.
“Of course.” The Ufangian waved off the possibility of any other answer. “Stuff like that is supposed to be old pre-Republic stock. There haven’t been any undocumented trunks since the Iimperial days, so we’d be talking about wood that sat in a warehouse for at least a couple thousand years.”
Cal shrugged.
“A full, commercial-size trunk loses half its aromatic compounds every two hundred years,” the investigator explained. “Anything from the imperial era has some antique appeal but the smell is almost completely gone. You pretty much only see small boxes made from an Imperial trunk because they accumulate some odor between openings and the owner can get a decent sniff of it.”
He nodded back over his shoulder. “The stuff I’ve seen here in Tsekoh is fresh – damned fresh. It’s not legacy wood – it’s stuff that got harvested in the last century at the most.”
“So, it has to be coming down on the tether,” Cal mused. “I don’t imagine there’d be a secret plantation down here.” He closed his graphic novel. “And it all goes through this Tauhentan’s warehouse – G’Maj was the name?”
A grin. “Planning on paying a visit to your planetman?”
“Something like that.”
“Well, he’s off world right now. One of his sons is looking after the place while he’s gone.”
“Then there’s not a second to waste.” Cal stood, his comrade following his lead. “It’s the perfect time to pay a call and suggest we’re interested in doing business. With the kid, we probably won’t be expected to finalize anything so we can just talk our way in the front door, steal their data and get the hells out.”
Another grin from the Ufangian. First an investigative assignment and now a field trip with the big guy himself. “I’ve got a sticky.” He patted his chest pocket. “No need to stop anywhere along the way.”
C’al’s pleased chuckle was all the reward the man needed.
Heritage
Planet 3428
Rick sat in his usual spot, staring down from the top of the ship to where a small group worked in the vegetable plots. He wished he could change places with any one of them. They may not be
engineering officers, but they were at least treated with respect.
Rick’s family had kept the ship running for a century and a half, but they were resented for it. Sandy Heywood’s rare, esoteric knowledge had been the reason the mutineers couldn’t leave him with the fleet. Without a proper, distortion-qualified engineer, the Canal wouldn’t have made it very far.
Heywood had possessed the sense to keep that knowledge in the family and, as the decades went by, the family became the only ones who could keep the core systems operating. The twisted version of history on 3428 might make them a family of untouchables, but they were still indispensable untouchables.
If he were a simple, anonymous harvest worker, would Nell think better of him? He seriously doubted it. If he weren’t forbidden fruit, he wouldn’t be a safe, harmless diversion for her. He’d be someone with slightly less unrealistic expectations. Rick was safe because there was simply no chance of his being a viable prospect for Nell.
He wanted to be angry with her but he had to admit his own reasons had less to do with affection than they did with a need for acceptance. In some dark recess of his mind, there lurked a vague hope that she would defy convention and free him from his family’s undeserved shame.
“I used to sit in that very same spot,” a strong, deep voice told him.
Rick didn’t need to look over as the older man settled beside him. “Hi, Dad.”
“You know, I see you walking past our quarters every time you head up here.” He arched his back. “Wait till you’re my age. You’ll find a lower place to work out your troubles.”
“What makes you think I’m troubled?”
“’Cause you’re a Heywood,” the old man said mildly, “and I used to come up here for the same reason.” He looked out at the setting sun, beams of red and orange shafting through the jungle canopy. “Good place to get some thinking done, but thinking’s highly overrated, if you ask me…”
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