Free Space

by Sean Danker

  It was coming into focus. It was a tiny business for refueling ships. Specifically, long-range cargo haulers. There were also a restaurant and some comfort-related amenities.

  There would be a VR parlor and probably some kind of gambling opportunity. The men and women who piloted those long-distance haulers made a lot of money and usually didn’t have much to spend it on. They spent the majority of their time flying. Not even flying, just being in their ships, which mostly flew themselves—but galactic law demanded a pilot be present regardless. It wasn’t a very exciting career.

  So that was who Idris was: the proprietor of this facility. But why kidnap people? It was because a lot of these pilots had implants and augmentations that made it difficult, or impossible, for them to safely use full-immersion VR, which meant they needed real, physical outlets for their personal comfort needs—but this was Free Trade space, so there was no shortage of perfectly willing sex workers. On top of that, a proper fuel stop ought to have some comfort androids as well.

  Kidnapped women had to have a more specific purpose. The Empire wasn’t popular with everyone, but I doubted that random pilots wanted to pay money to mistreat unwilling Evagardian girls. Idris had to have a more specialized business on the side.

  Charming.

  Maybe his trade in people was part of the service he offered with his business, but more likely it was the real business, and the fuel, food, and other distractions offered by his establishment were just camouflage.

  I was starting to get a feel for it. I could hardly imagine anything more upsetting, but getting upset wouldn’t be constructive.

  Light and movement caught my eye. There was a tablet-style holo in a webbed holder on the back of Willis’ seat. Sei had managed to activate it with his feet. On the screen was footage of Freeber and Willis. I couldn’t tell what they were doing; it was dark. Sei determinedly prodded at the commands with his shoe, oblivious to the panicked looks I was giving him. Maybe he thought he could somehow use it to call for help.

  Freeber’s music covered up any noise he was making, but that wasn’t the point—our captors weren’t going to take kindly to this kind of invasion of their privacy. Maybe Sei didn’t fully appreciate how dangerous these people were. They didn’t want to hurt us—they wanted to sell us—but that didn’t mean it was a good idea to provoke them.

  Now Sei was looking at footage from a space race at Isaka, a fairly prestigious one. These two certainly got around.

  His eyes flicked to Freeber, who was busy flying the ship. It looked like the big man was plotting a course, not a jump. The ship was accelerating. Wherever we were going, it couldn’t be very far away.

  Now Sei was watching video of a hermaphroditic figure covered in pink fur, with a tail and two large catlike ears. Willis and Freeber were both there as well, and I doubted that they wanted strangers to see this footage. In fact, it looked like it had taken place in the pleasure tower at Red Yonder.

  I wasn’t sure if the pink thing was an android or not, but people didn’t usually record things they did with androids. Probably a human specialist with a lot of modification.

  While that sort of thing wasn’t really my cup of tea, it reminded me of the time with Salmagard that I wasn’t going to get, of the disruption these two had brought to my life, which was in a fragile place.

  I kicked Sei savagely in the knee, and he glared at me, then reluctantly turned the reader off.

  Freeber looked back at us, then at Willis, who had begun to tremble and shiver. He pulled a blanket from the floor and tossed it over her sleeping form, reaching over to arrange it better, then to wipe a little drool from her mouth and fondly stroke her hair for a moment.

  She was completely gone.

  It would’ve been a sweet gesture if the blanket had been a little cleaner.

  The scene ahead of us was changing. It took me a moment to realize what I was looking at.

  It was a truly gargantuan shape, looking like it was composed entirely of cubes of all sizes, all mashed together into a space station.

  It certainly wasn’t traditional station design, and though I’d never been inside, I knew it by sight.

  This was the Bazaar.

  Any decent-sized space station offered a lot of shopping, but the Bazaar was different. It was the only establishment of its kind. Free Trade space wasn’t exactly lawless, but it was far from safe—big-ticket vendors and merchants needed protection. The Bazaar, in exchange for a steep price, offered that, along with a fixed location and the simple prestige of being part of the Bazaar. Which was a big deal.

  Once a very utilitarian mercantile fixture, the Bazaar had become its own brand over time, and one of the most fascinating destinations in Free Trade space. In addition to the massive amount of business it received, there was also a thriving tourist trade. It was almost as large a draw as Baykara City.

  Shopping in person for physical goods wasn’t very efficient, but it was the only option if those goods were sensitive enough. Out in the galaxy, shopping for certain things would draw attention. In the Bazaar, at least in theory, you could shop without leaving records that could be accessed by any major galactic authorities.

  The Bazaar’s interior was considered sovereign space, and it wasn’t accountable to the Free Trade Charter. That meant it was legal to buy anything, but it also meant the Bazaar itself could treat you however it liked. There were no laws against trafficking controlled commodities, but there were also no consumer protection laws.

  Stealing in there could get you executed; the Bazaar offered security for its vendors, and it meant business. Murder might go unpunished, though. I didn’t know the details; I just knew the Bazaar was very much its own world, and that there was nothing there that you couldn’t get. Commerce wasn’t exactly the law there; it was more like the religion.

  It was the sort of place Prince Dalton would have wanted to visit—not that his personal security would have let him.

  Even if they weren’t governed by it, most of the businesses in there still operated under the Free Trade Charter because their customers would have to leave at some point and didn’t want to become criminals the moment they walked out the door—but not all of them.

  There were whole industries built around smuggling illegal things out of the Bazaar. Every intelligence service in the galaxy knew that weapons of mass destruction were being sold in there—and they were all waiting to pounce on anyone who came out with them, so wares like that had to be moved discreetly.

  The fuel stop made sense. The cargo pilots were bringing wares for the vendors in the bazaar, but the pilots weren’t going to pay the exorbitant entry fees to get themselves into the Bazaar. They would deliver their goods, then take their leisure at places like the one we’d just come from, or the various smaller stations clustered around the Bazaar, before they moved on to their next contracts.

  Between the entry fees and rent and commissions from the actual merchants, I’d heard the Bazaar was staggeringly profitable. The station was little more than a shell with life support. It was massive—so massive that it couldn’t be cheap to run, but compared with more lavish facilities, it had to be pennies on the Commonwealth dollar.

  And I knew exactly where it was. We were deep in Free Trade space, near the Trigan curvature, but even nearer to the frontier.

  Imperial Pointe was considered genteel by Free Trade standards, thanks to its close proximity to Evagardian space. But I remembered how easily we’d been kidnapped there.

  Out here, things were probably pretty rough. My time as Prince Dalton hadn’t been all easy, but it had been luxurious. I didn’t have a lot of hours clocked in this kind of environment, and my dealings with people like Willis and Freeber were limited.

  But it made sense for them to bring us here. People were sensitive cargo. I didn’t know exactly where Free Trade law stood on the subject of human beings. I knew there were looph
oles allowing for indentured servitude that could easily be twisted into what any imperial would view as slavery—that was probably the sort of situation that Sei and I were headed for.

  And that brought to mind some ugly possibilities. At one end of the spectrum was respectable indentured servitude. That was by no means a desirable path in life, but it was more or less civilized. At the other end, people bought and sold humans for some nasty things.

  It didn’t matter which one Willis and Freeber had in mind for us—I had places to be and things to do.

  And now it looked like we weren’t going to the Bazaar after all.

  The station loomed in front of us, but we weren’t making for it—we were heading for another establishment built onto an asteroid. This one was obviously a gambling den.

  There were quite a few small ships and shuttles in dock around the place.

  Freeber skillfully brought in the tug between a Trigan corvette and an Evagardian shuttle. There might have been some very discreet or very heavily guarded imperials inside the Bazaar—but there wouldn’t be any here. This Evagardian shuttle was just a symbol of status for a wealthy galactic. And it was brave for them to leave it out here unattended.

  Freeber undid his straps and checked his chrono, then leaned over and gently patted Willis’ cheek. She stirred, groggily opening her eyes. Seeing we had arrived, she sat up, blinking rapidly. She pushed the blanket aside and staggered to her feet, shuffling off to the lavatory.

  Sei and I waited patiently, gazing at the brightly lit gambling den. Lots of flashing lights and advertisements—plenty of brands and products I’d never even heard of. There was always something new to see in Free Trade space.

  There was an atmosphere field around the den. You could leave your ship without a pressure suit and just stroll through the door.

  Willis returned as Freeber was getting me and Sei out of our seats. Though I wasn’t sure how long I’d been unconscious, I knew I had to be coming due for my next injection. I needed regular doses of the antidote to the poison EI had gotten me with until I could find the time for a proper dialysis. But even with my hands free and the ability to speak, my things had been taken—and probably left at Idris’ place. I didn’t have the antidote.

  And that was a problem. I already had a headache.

  “Just walk them in?” Freeber asked.

  Willis shrugged.

  “He won’t like it.”

  Willis clearly did not care. She yawned, then stretched.

  Freeber tucked a pistol into the back of his waistband and pulled on a jacket.

  We left the tug and waited while Willis, grumbling, paid for a lift platform to carry us to the ground. The green and white tiles underfoot stood out sharply from the asteroid rock, and the recycled air smelled distinctly bitter. It was the scent of the rock itself. I felt the tingle of decontamination mist, and the flashing advertisements were making my headache worse.

  In time, as the poison reproduced in my bloodstream and the levels rose, it would cause my veins to constrict, gradually reducing blood flow. I’d lose strength, sensation, and motor skills. Eventually it would get bad enough that it would result in less oxygen getting to my brain. I wasn’t exactly sure how long it would take to kill me. At full strength, a few minutes.

  The antidote pushed it back, but the poison was designed to linger until the job was done, so it wouldn’t stop trying.

  People emerged from the den and others pushed ahead of us to get inside. We drew a few glances, but apparently two young men wearing control cuffs weren’t enough to impress anyone. There were all sorts here—men and women of all ages. There were plenty of pilots, but also people who had the look of being locals. The Bazaar was surrounded by smaller stations, but the cluster itself was fairly isolated. Inside the Bazaar, you could spend years trying to experience everything being offered, but outside it there was only so much to do. Places like this were popular for a reason.

  Sei was nearly knocked down by a teenage girl in a Martian singlet, and she was being chased by a boy in a costume that was meant to look like an imperial EV suit. There were a couple of food carts outside the doors, and little tables, lots of people sitting and eating. A band of three with Trigan mariachi synths was playing a set that was getting a great reaction.

  It was good music, but Freeber and Willis weren’t even slightly interested.

  The den’s doors opened, and loud music and voices washed over us, along with some very welcome warm air.

  The interior was more or less what I expected. Crowded. Gaudy. There was a lot of fake gilding around; the dominant colors were purple, green, and gold.

  Chimes and electronic noises filled the air, which was thick with the smell of burning plant and chemical matter, and also ethanol. And sweat.

  Waiters and waitresses in uniforms that were equal parts minimalist and theatrical were prancing around the gaming floor, and holoscreens formed corridors that created the illusion of being underwater. Mermaids and exotic fish swam around us. It was the sort of place Prince Dalton would’ve loved.

  A man in fashionable body armor halted Willis.

  “Don’t just walk past,” he said, looking tired.

  “Me?” Willis placed a hand on her heart, looking indignant.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” the armored man said, glancing at Freeber.

  “Hey.” Willis snapped her fingers in front of the man’s face. “It’s me. You’re talking to me. Don’t tell him where he should be. He belongs with me.”

  The man in the armor glowered at her for a moment, then looked at me and Sei. He seemed to be deliberating. He wanted to stand his ground, but he didn’t want to make a scene on the gaming floor.

  “What is this?”

  “None of your business,” Willis replied.

  The man said something into his holo, then turned and started away.

  Willis followed without hesitation. Freeber pushed us along behind her.

  Sei was looking around like he wanted to catch someone’s eye, but I knew there wasn’t likely to be any help for us here. Ideally, Willis and Freeber would sell us. Then we’d get our hands free, or at least the use of our voices. Then maybe we could do something.

  Given the state of my health, I was hoping we’d get to that part soon.

  We took an abrupt turn, and we were off the main floor. At the end of a narrow corridor was an office. It was roomy, but the dark colors made it seem smaller than it was. A shifting light throbbed in one corner, bathing it all in a soothing light.

  The man inside got to his feet, face disbelieving, as the guy in the armor followed us inside. The door closed behind us, shutting out the noise from the floor completely.

  There was a big statue in the corner of a nude woman holding a sword and covered in blood, which I recognized instantly. It was a promotional display from a Ganraen drama produced during the war with Evagard, based very loosely on the Grand Duchess. The production had been financed by the Royals, its goal to provoke imperial ire, and it had done it.

  As Prince Dalton, I had been at the premiere. It had included numerous historical inaccuracies, a less-than-flattering portrayal of the Heroes of the Unification, and a treatment of the Grand Duchess that included all manner of unflatteringly scandalous antics. None of it with any credible basis in fact, but that was the nature of propaganda.

  Not content simply to let a popular Ganraen actress portray the Duchess, the drama’s producers had digitally re-created the Grand Duchess’ face and voice down to the smallest detail.

  I couldn’t imagine anything that could possibly offend Evagardians more. As a means of inspiring outrage, the drama had been a smashing success.

  That was the only anti-imperial object in the office, but the rest of Heimer’s decor was equally tacky.

  “Hi,” Willis said, doing a good job of sounding very cavalier about it.


  The man—Heimer, presumably—gaped at her. He was short and a little paunchy, but normal enough. I placed him at around fifty. He wore an impeccable Frontier suit.

  These Free Trade crooks were snappy dressers. I was just assuming he was a crook. There was nothing illegal about running a gambling den, but I doubted Willis would try to sell us to an upstanding citizen. On the other hand, this was Free Trade space. These people were all weird.

  Freeber was tense, but Willis kept up her act.

  “Got something for you,” Willis said, reaching up to put her hand on my head. She rubbed my hair. “What do you think?”

  “About what?”

  “About them. These two. Evagardian. Come on. Prassa will totally be all over them. I’ll give you a discount.”

  Heimer’s mouth moved silently. He pointed a finger at Willis, moved it to Freeber, then back to Willis. A full five seconds went by before he could form words.

  “You want to sell me a couple of imperials so I can give them to my wife?”

  “What part of that are you not getting?” Willis asked, giving him the most irritating look she could muster. I was starting to have some doubts about her business acumen.

  Then they were all pulling guns.

  Heimer’s had come out of his sleeve, Willis’ from her holster, Freeber’s from his belt, and the bodyguard’s had already been in his hand.

  Both Willis and Freeber were aiming at Heimer. Heimer was aiming at Freeber, and the bodyguard had the muzzle of his pistol pressed to the back of Willis’ head.

  I was impressed; it had happened fast. The chems Willis was using didn’t slow her down. Sei’s eyes were wide. I knew how he felt.

  “You’re seriously going to come in here fucked-up on—on whatever you’re using, and talk to me about Prassa,” Heimer said, glaring at Willis. “And you let her,” he said to Freeber.

  “Grow up,” Willis said, eyes narrowed. “You were there. She’ll love these guys. I’m doing you a favor.”

  “You think this is going to work out for you?” Heimer asked, tone patronizing. “You know, if I kill you both, all I’m doing is saving you some embarrassment. Shut up,” he said to Freeber, who had been starting to say something.