by J. S. Morin
# # #
“Hey, Brad. You make this month’s payroll yet?”
They were the first words out of Dad’s mouth when the comm to Ithaca connected them. Carl leaned his head back against the co-pilot’s seat and shut his eyes. Amy reached over from the pilot’s seat and gave his arm a squeeze.
“Not yet, Dad. I just wanted to let everyone know that we’re a little behind schedule. Our buyer changed plans on us at the last minute, and we’re on our way to a revised exchange.”
When Carl peeked across, he caught a raised eyebrow directed his way. As if he was going to out and tell Dad that he’d botched a simple exchange, chased the double-crosser to the wrong planet, and ignored Mort’s initial advice on where to find the stolen case.
“Well, just so you know, I’ve got things bolted down solid planetside. There’s been a little grumbling, but I’ve corralled the troublemakers and placated the rest. Sooner you get back with an infusion of currency, the smoother this transitional period will go.”
Carl sat up in his seat. “Transitional period?”
“I mean, the post-naval era. I’ve been putting my boot down on the whole rank business. Being an ensign on a starship doesn’t make you any better than a midshipman who can handle a blaster. I’ve been going through the personnel and reorganizing a bit. Don’t worry though, Don’s been a big help showing me the ropes of how an organization like this runs. It’s like cribbing from Lombardi’s playbook.”
This tasted wrong. Not sour, perhaps, but neither was it as sweet a deal as he’d been hoping for. “What sort of changes you making in my syndicate?”
“Oh, nothing unorthodox. You’re the head—the Don Rucker, so to speak. I’m acting in the role of operations chief. I’m not as hands-on as Earl Rucker, but the same general idea. You get to make all the big decisions; I take care of the stuff you pass on. Without ranks getting in the way, it’s been easier identifying the go-getters, separating the sheep from the wolves. And Brad, you had a lot of sheep and some wolves who weren’t exactly playing for the same pack.”
“Hold up. You saying I had traitors?”
Figures. You rescue a bunch of sailors from six years of isolation on a hostile moon, and what thanks do you get? A bunch of backstabbers mixed in who’d rather undermine their savior than slink back to a normal life like two-thirds of the survivors chose. Still, it shouldn’t have surprised him. He’d known even in his active duty days that there were plenty of officers and even a few among the enlisted who were me-first sorts, just along for the promotions and the power trip.
“Maybe not ‘traitor’ traitors,” Dad said. Carl could even picture him mussing his own hair in feigned self-consciousness. Chuck Ramsey wouldn’t have been self-conscious pissing in a glass-walled shower in front of an audience of nuns. “But you know how datapad jockeys can get. Rocking the boat, picking fights over procedural issues, and just generally undermining your authority while you’re offworld. That’s the main reason you’ve gotta keep those two feet of yours planted on solid ground until this business stabilizes.”
“Names,” Carl prompted. Dad was dancing around the issue instead of bragging, which meant that Carl wasn’t going to like who’d been whacked on the nose with a rolled newspaper in his name.
“Well, Kwon was the main culprit. She had an opinion on everything, and no matter what you told her, she’d go right back to her own plans as soon as your back was turned.”
There was a sinking feeling in Carl’s gut. He glanced over to Amy and saw by the knit of her brow that she’d picked up on it as well: there was a lot of past tense in that sentence. “Um, Dad… you didn’t by any chance…?”
Dad laughed. “She’s fine. We got her a new name and credentials and resettled her in border space.”
Carl swallowed. “Good to hear, Dad. We’ll be back when we wrap up this business. Mobius out.” Carl shut down the comm and slammed his fist on the armrest.
“I’m guessing Sephiera’s not fine.”
“No. When Dad said he’s been getting advice from Don, he meant it. Don would never admit to murder over the comm, even on an encrypted channel. But taking someone on a long trip in the deep end of the astral’s practically cliché. She’s gone, and no one’s ever finding the body. The fake ID is just to start a trail that hasn’t got an end.”
“Your dad’s cleaning house while you’re gone. We should warn Jax.”
Carl wiped his hands over his face. “It’s only fair. But Dad wouldn’t touch Rachel or the kids. I’d shoot him myself.”
# # #
“Dear Mr. Ivanhoe. I am SO SO SORRY. I am not trying to intentionally inconvenience you, but once again I will be unable to meet you at our agreed-upon place and date. I swear, if you give me ONE more chance, you won’t be sorry.”
Esper cringed as the missive whizzed off into the omni. This was awful. Poor Ivanhoe. What must he think of her? The One Church taught patience and understanding, but even in her days as a priestess, Esper would have been skeptical of her mystery benefactor’s intentions by this point. What if he read her comm and decided never to reply?
“And if something goes wrong this time, I’ll just pack up the book and ship it to Earth.”
No pressure. If Ivanhoe wanted to advocate on Mort’s behalf, that was wonderful. The important thing was making him understand that she wasn’t expecting him to crisscross the galaxy chasing the book down if it was ever going to make its way to Earth. Would it be better off in the hands of a pro-Mort agent vetted by Keesha Bell? Of course. But Ivanhoe or no Ivanhoe, the Tome of Bleeding Thoughts needed to get out of Esper’s quarters.
The response she’d feared would never arrive came instead without delay. “No! I will make revised rendezvous. Advise.”
Something Esper had said warranted an exclamation point from Ivanhoe. It was the first hint of emotion from anything he’d typed. The rest could have been written by a computer for all she’d been able to glean from the prose. She felt a pang of guilt as she glanced down at the message she’d sent to provoke that reaction. Would she really have shipped off the tome like it was nothing more than a recipe book? Would it even let her?
To assuage her guilt, Esper offered up a tidbit to humanize her plight. “My ship and I are on a course for Mirny. We’ve run into mishaps with our last client, and have been forced to track him down at our last two ports of call to no avail. I have a good feeling about Mirny though. We’re set to arrive August 12, 3:55AM Earth Standard.”
Esper waited. The silence dragged on for longer than the usual lag between transmissions. “Very well. I cannot be there when you arrive, but I can be planetside at Mirny by 7:00PM, same day.”
The message stared at her. Esper stared back with eyes wide. Astral navigation wasn’t her specialty, but certain basic tenets stuck with her. First, anyone who was trying to arrive on Zeevos by August 10th had to more or less be there by now. Ivanhoe didn’t strike her as the sort to be tardy without warning. Then there was transit him. The Mobius was taking two days to get to Mirny because Mort was handling their astral travel. Most often it took them a third to a fifth of the time that even military couriers would have needed to get from planet to planet. Even with a side trip to Zeevos, which was in the wrong direction, that could only mean one thing.
Ivanhoe did his own astral drops, and he was nearly as good as Mort.
# # #
The planet Mirny looked brown from orbit. It looked just as brown on approach. And, if possible, it looked brownest of all from ground level. The only inhabited stretch was a glacial cirque carved by eons of ammonia snow and further hollowed by technologists. The atmosphere wasn’t breathable, but it was borderline livable with minimal skin exposure and assisted breathing. Mort felt like a bit of a prat for not understanding the workings of an ammonia world, what with being from a family of terramancers. But he knew that with his necklace from Mt. Kilimanjaro providing fresh air (scented with the musk of ancient savanna wildlife), he was safe from the worst of the surface’s
effects.
The Tuckerman Rift colony was an industrial concern. The mountains had elemental earth in several rare and profitable forms. Techno-prospectors had come in droves to leech it dry, but they all lived in the sheltered bowl, protected against the worst of the local climate’s ravages. Mort would have hated to see how bad life would have been if they’d lived under the blistering winds. Even in possibly the most habitable part of Mirny, they’d cobbled together a little replica of ancient Siberia.
The colony was stair-stepped into the sides of the cirque’s bowl like ancient farmlands. Residents who walked the streets at all were bundled in environmental suits against the biting cold. Most eschewed travel on foot altogether and rode around in tracked vehicles with ice-rimed windows. Every public building had an airlock, and the locals welcomed the warming pollutants belched into the sky by their ubiquitous factories. Mort knew that on foot—and unprotected by sciencified fabrics and portable air—he drew curious stares. But none of the other Mobius residents were eager to wander the colony as he searched, and he was glad to be free of their unhelpful presences.
For the hundredth time, Mort cursed the laws on Pintara that allowed blanket anti-surveillance charms. If paranoid locals hadn’t paid vast sums to some Convocation get-rich sorts, Mort would have been able to find the case before it ever left the planet. Instead, he’d lost an argument to science and ended up dragged to the wrong world, and now on the right planet, he was mucking through ammonia-laden air playing Marco Polo with a suitcase full of puddle water.
There were, of course, two upsides Mort could see. First was that on this bleak and sparsely populated world, he was having no trouble finding his sigil. The mark he’d left on the case was a clarion call in the distance, leading him unerringly toward the rapscallion who’d outfoxed Carl. But there was also the ammonia itself, which was doing a bang-up job loosening a few stubborn stains from his sweatshirt as he idly rubbed at the fabric.
But Mort was closing in. The feeling of proximity resonated deep in his bones.
“You there,” a voice blared from behind, causing Mort to jump and whirl to face a potential threat. It was one of the crawling vehicles, and the voice came from a cone perched on its roof. “Clear the road. For safety reasons, this portion of the city is off limits to foot traffic.”
Mort looked himself up and down. “You daft yokel. Do I look like I’m in distress out here? I’m on official Convocation business, tracking down a fugitive with stolen goods.”
“There is no record of a sanctioned Convocation investigation in Tuckerman Rift.”
Mort held up a hand and the Convocation crest appeared. Usually, Mort just produced an illusory replica of the chain of office he wore as Guardian of the Plundered Tomes, but this time he wanted a little extra oomph. The lightning bolt crackled with electricity, and the “C” was formed of molten earth, dripping white-hot droplets to the road. “Consider yourself informed. Now bugger off. I don’t file formal complaints when some knobby local law snoop gets in the way of my business.” He left the alternative unspoken, but the wheely-tracks on the vehicle reversed and pulled the busybody nuisance down the road in the other direction.
Mort harrumphed and returned to his search.
Another factory, this time abandoned, was where the rainbow trail ended. Mort’s pot of gold lay within. Ego and instincts prodded him to march inside, give the thief a piece of his mind, and leave the poor sap’s mind in pieces. But Carl had made it quite clear that there was a million-terra risk of fouling the seawater they were stealing back. Mort was to find the thief and relay his location back to the crew.
Mort made a full circuit of the building, just to be sure. But there was no mistaking it. The grimy steel fortress looked like no one had entered in years, but there was at least one occupant or at least someone had ventured inside to stash a certain case. It wasn’t even that large, for which Mort’s feet were thankful. It was a shorter walk than a circuit of Boston Common, if less fragrant.
Staring at the front door airlock to the building, Mort considered ignoring Carl’s orders. It wouldn’t have been the first time, nor likely would it be the last. Venting the building to the toxic outdoor atmosphere would be a good start, putting the poor fellow on the defensive in an instant. Then Mort could ration his use of magic to disable the thief without harming the goods—or rather, the goo.
He hadn’t brought his staff. There would have been questions if he had. Not much getting around the fact that Mort rarely brought it with him unless he was looking for trouble. Hard to justify a wizardly assault without looking the part. If he’d sneaked it along for the search, maybe things would have turned out differently for the thief. “You got lucky today,” he muttered at the factory’s front door before turning and trudging back to the Mobius.
# # #
The plan was set.
The Mobius dropped off Mort and Esper at ground level before heading for the roof. They were assigned to guard the two known exits to the facility. According to Yomin, the blueprints weren’t on file anywhere on the omni. As the ship lifted off, Esper fumbled for the control to enable the small external speaker on her EV helmet.
“I’ll watch the front entrance,” she and Mort said in unison except in Mort’s version, he said ‘rear.’
Mort scowled. “I thought you’d want the rear so when the sneaky bugger crawls out the back, you’d be there to head him off.”
“I figured the same, except I want nothing to do with confronting him. He’s all yours.”
“You’re not worried I’m going to string him up by his ears?”
“It’s not my primary concern. No.”
Esper waited out Mort’s puzzled frown until he punctuated it with a curt nod. “Well, let’s get to it then.”
# # #
The airlock was designed for a single occupant, but Carl and Juggler were squeezed in tight. With the gravity of the Mobius stabilizing them, it was hard to tell what the ship was doing beyond the airlock walls. The engine hum was still going but just maneuvering, not the main drive. Two thrusters. Then just one. Then two again. Amy was feathering the controls to give them a gentle landing, right square on the factory rooftop.
“Don’t mind me,” Juggler said, his voice coming through the EV helm’s comm despite them being in physical contact. “That’s just my blaster. I’m not that happy to be crammed in here with you.”
Carl grunted and shifted as best he could until Juggler’s blaster wasn’t digging into his thigh. “Nothing personal, but these are the times I wish Tanny—or even Mriy—was still around.”
“Tanny I get. Mriy though? Didn’t know you swung xeno.”
“I mean for the tactical advice. Maybe one or the other of them could have weighed the extra time for a second cycle of the airlock against the discomfort of these accommodations.”
“Two million terras is a lot to piss away on losing the element of surprise.”
“You wouldn’t have to wait on me. I’d let you run in there and follow as soon as I could. And it’s 2.2 million.”
Juggler snorted into his mic. “Yeah, I’m sure you would. If this thief has a blaster, wouldn’t hurt being second man in.”
There was a telltale thump that signaled their arrival on the ground. The airlock lurched and lowered to the roof before cycling open.
Amy’s voice came over the comm. “We’re down. Best of luck in there.”
The rooftop gave a panoramic look over the city as the bowl shape receded to the west. Whorls in the wind reminded Carl that the air outside was mostly cleaning solvent, and he had to remind himself that Yomin had looked up the specs on their EV suits on the omni and pronounced them ammonia-resistant. With how corporate legal weasels edited those specs, it wouldn’t have surprised Carl if that assurance was for concentrations just a bit less than he was currently wading through.
Drawing his blaster and motioning for Juggler to follow, Carl headed for the rooftop access hatch. God bless lazy maintenance crews for putting an ent
rance up top to keep from having to use a vehicle to work on the roof.
# # #
Roddy was still shuffling when Amy entered the common room carrying a hand comm. Yomin sat across the table, glancing down at her datalens, wondering if it wouldn’t be much more useful to the raid if she had it on. But Roddy’s pre-game instructions had been clear: no scanners at the poker table.
“This feels wrong,” Amy muttered as she seated herself at Roddy’s side. “I should be waiting in the cockpit in case they need a quick getaway.”
Roddy started dealing. “You’re what, twenty meters from the pilot’s seat? Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum aren’t going to get in any trouble that’ll get ‘em to the ship any faster than you can get it off the ground. Now ante up.”
Yomin pushed her five-terra coin into the middle of the table. “Weird handling real money. Thanks for staking me.”
“Hey, if we can bribe planetary security without dipping into our own pockets, the least I can do is spot you poker money. Besides, if I don’t turn down the simmer on those brains of yours, both of you were going to boil over.”
With a spare glance at her comm, Amy anted as well. “If digital terras are just sitting around for anyone to spend, why doesn’t the whole economy collapse?”
“Well, five long isn’t going to topple trade colonies or crash the resource exchanges. Plus, you’ve got to fit in between the hard cap on bank transactions that the TBRA flags and the amount you need to spend. Then you need to find targets with soft enough encryption for the cracker you’re running with. Me? I nicked the code-breakers from the Odysseus and replicated the algorithm into my personal core. It doesn’t crack nearly as fast as it would on a battleship, but it’ll chew through just about anything civilian.” Yomin lifted a can of EnerJuice. “Pirating that software for my own use is actually the most illegal thing I’ve done in my life. And that includes the few stray murders we’ve been associated with.”
