April 2: Down to Earth

by Mackey Chandler

"Yes you could, but he's trying to cover not legitimate owners, but anyone that might take possession of it. There are some things inside Jeff doesn't intent to patent and he doesn't intend to share. So if an unauthorized person keeps trying to use the gun, or open it, they are warned it will self destruct. If the full charge is on the power pack, the self destruct can be about four kiloton. But if the low power option is selected on this new model, it allows you downsize that, to just enough to vaporize the guts of the thing."

  "Four kiloton? You mean if it self-destructs, it has the power of a small atomic bomb going off?" he seemed to hold it a little more delicately.

  "Sure. If you are captured and they try to open this puppy up or use it, you might as well give them the rudest surprise you can. It's set low now, because I wouldn't want the big of a charge to go off in Home. But when we take trips off Home, I tell it to crank up the self destruct level."

  "Then Home has the equivalent of nuclear weapons, " he spoke aloud, realizing it. "And cheap too, because you couldn't build a small fission bomb for fifteen thousand. I know I've read they cost millions." Do they know this down below?"

  "Well, again, we've told them. But if they believe it or not is another thing," April admitted. "I have some interceptor missiles on the Happy Lewis now, that are tipped with a ten kiloton version of the same thing. So if anybody messes with us in orbit, they'll get a demo that will be very convincing."

  "It is light and you don't have to carry separate cartridges, but that's a lot of money for a pistol. I'm not broke, but I have to establish myself here and get a regular clientele before I start buying luxury items," he said, regretfully.

  "Hmm," April considered the problem a bit. "How about, if we swap you a pistol, upgrades and service for it and carry anything you want couriered to other stations or Luna for the next year and transport for yourself as passenger on any of our regular flights and you supply inoculations for the Singh and Lewis families beyond mine? I'll still buy at the full price as agreed? I can run that past Jeff and see what he thinks."

  "Just for the current modification we're discussing? And we'll negotiate for any further modifications later? And you'll take samples I need protected and disperse them, like you were talking about, to not two, but three locations. Two stations and Luna, so if something happens I'll have stock to restart my program. And you'll take new samples from time to time, to deposit at those locations? I think I could do that. Let me think about it just a bit first."

  "This mod and first rights on the multitasking. I'll ask Jeff tonight and see if he'd be interested on those terms"

  "How about if I buy into Singh Industries as a partner? You say that gets you a free pistol when the new model comes out. I'm always watching for shrewd investments. How many partners are there?"

  "Well, Jeff's company is separate from his step-mom's, don't get them confused. Her firm is Singh Technologies. There's only three equal partners to Jeff's company, so it's pretty closely held. We'd have to see extraordinary circumstances, to allow somebody to buy in."

  "And how much would that cost me?" he kept pressing. It was as rude as asking a Texan how many head of cattle he ran. So April was irritated enough by that pushy side of his personality, she decided to answer him truthfully.

  "The last time we had to declare a value on company assets for insurance purposes, they agreed to value them at three hundred billion dollars." There were Earth companies with assets in trillions of dollars, but it was not a mom and pop business valuation.

  Jerry was caught in mid swallow and lost all fine control when his brain processed that number. He gagged on it and used his reflexes to excellent advantage by getting a napkin up to his mouth at super speed and coughing into it in spasms. It tapered off into sputtering and it looked like he would live. It took awhile to get it totally under control and he wiped his eyes with a fresh napkin. It was mean to drop that on him, but he had really been pushy and nosey. She didn't think he'd do that again. And he didn't challenge the number. She didn't tell him it was mostly potential income over the life of his intellectual property, not cash in hand by any stretch.

  "OK kiddies," Margaret complained. Sensing it was time to change the subject. "You are killing me with curiosity. Can you tell me what this modification is? Is it something I could afford, or is it really expensive?"

  "It's pretty steep Margaret, but the nature of it, is it's more useful if you don't let everyone know you have it. So do you mind telling her, Jerry?"

  "No," he said looking surprised. "If I'm committed to selling it now, secrecy works against me. I guess I was trapped by the same idea, that I'd keep it secret I had the mod personally, because it made me safer. That was fine on Earth. But reconsidering the idea now, I should have been showing off to everybody, as a form of advertising. I have a small alteration to the nervous system," he informed Margaret. "I have a little bit faster reactions than most people," he explained, making it sound very minor.

  She wasn't fooled. The services she heard being offered on top of cash, were not a reasonable trade for something like a flu shot. This had to be pretty special. "How fast? Can you show me?"

  Jerry pursed his lips and thought about it. He cleared their trays away and put the pepper shaker in the middle of the table. "Go with April first. Put your hand down, with the palm off the edge of the table." He fiddled with his pad a minute. "When my pad beeps, see who can get the shaker first. He tilted the pad back, so he wouldn't give any visual clues.

  "Beep." April had a hand firmly over the little cylinder and Margaret's hand was on top of hers almost as fast. The next try they both tried to wrap their hands around in a dead heat and it popped straight up in the air. Jerry reached and snatched it out of the air, before it could even tumble over. Margaret just looked at the speed of that grab speechless. "Wanda will get upset with us if we spill pepper and waste it," he explained.

  "OK. Put it down there and have April start us," she said, with a very determined air.

  Jerry passed her the pad and showed her the hot key. When the beep came he not only had the pepper before Margaret, he had it back close to him sitting on the table, with his hand off it, before she could reach where it had been. Then he sat it about a hundred centimeters from Margaret's side of the table, very close, leaving himself four times that distance to match her.

  When the beep came, Margaret did seem faster this time. She seemed to have willed an adrenaline high and she was so fast you could hear their hands collide. But the shaker was already firmly wrapped in his hand when they bumped.

  "Ahh! I think you have some of my skin under your nails," he said, looking at his knuckles.

  "We better stop before one of us hurt," she agreed, rubbing her own hand, he had batted away.

  "You are fast. I wish I could buy that, but I just work for a salary and don't have access to the kind of money so many do on Home. If I ever do I'll come see you."

  That visibly bothered Jerry. "I have to get some pretty significant payments from people to survive myself," he said defensively. "If I start selling my mods cheaper, it's just human nature that even if they have the money, they won't pay more if they know it can be had for less. There are plenty who, even if I based it on ability to pay would lie to get it cheaper. When I figure I can sell it to you without hurting my business, I'll tell you, OK?"

  "That's more than I'd ever ask," Margaret assured him. "I'm sure it'd worth every centum, but if you don't have it you don't have it."

  "Do what you need to," April encouraged him. "But there's another aspect of it you should consider."

  "What's that April?"

  "Margaret and the others in Security are the people guarding your front door. They meet the shuttles coming in. If they are a little quicker to deal with whatever comes out of the lock, you are safer. So if you get to where you can offer a special deal to people who work Security, I think people will understand it's a form of self interest."

  That said they were all done and broke up the meeting. Two companions fo
r breakfast was even better than one, April thought.

  Chapter 6

  April called up Jon Davis, Head of Security, a close friend and comrade at arms in the events of last year. Last year he and his man Frank had met up with April and Easy in the corridors, after each pair ambushed the invading North Americans and harried them through the corridors to the Holiday Inn. It was the only battle of the war to reach inside Home. The last few surviving invaders reached the Inn lobby, only to find the innkeeper and traitor they expected to extract, trussed and stunned. Neil McAlpine was waiting for them behind the check in counter, with a disguised claymore mine hanging on the front of it to greet them. His action stymied an attempted theft of Jeff Singh's proprietary technology, held in the hotel safe. Those devices had been critical to the success of their rebellion. Now Jon remained as Head of Security for the station, but by vote of the people and he wore a second hat as Head of the Militia.

  "Jon I have a friend I'd like to be able to send somewhere, to be instructed in handling small arms. What do you do for your own people in security? Do you have somewhere you go shoot to stay in practice? I use my laser and I have a target and can set it to low power and practice, but I have no formal instruction at all. I wouldn't mind having someone show me how to use a projectile weapon properly. I own a couple of them I've never shot."

  "That's always been a problem. Even when North America was picking up the tab, they never wanted to build us a range here. It was always too expensive. They always wanted the security people to go to an Earth range, when they finished their groundside leave and requalify before coming back up. That frequently ran into problems. Sometimes a whole family went dirtside and they didn't want to split up and come back separate. Or the spouse couldn't get extra days off their job."

  "I can't blame my people if they don't want to use their vacation days to shoot. And some like Theo never wanted to take groundside leave anyway. I ended up writing her a couple exemptions. I don't have a solution yet, but what I'd really like is an actual walk through tactical trainer, not just a shooting range with targets. It's about as impractical as the park that fellow wants. Maybe we could afford a facility on the Moon," he considered it a moment.

  "Maybe somebody even has such a thing there and we could rent or borrow time on it. I'll look into that. I never thought of it before, but it would be better that no training at all. And a lot cheaper to go to Luna, than down the deeper gravity well to Earth. Not to mention easier politically now."

  Chapter 7

  "Sis', can you do a quick turnaround to NLV for a medical dispatch and bring back the regular mail bag?" Bob Lewis asked, looking out of her com pad screen. April had a full license now, it only took her a few months to run up enough hours to lose apprentice status.

  "Sure. Who's free to ride shotgun?" April asked. "I want to take Click in and have him deal with customs for training. Then I have some personal errands to run. The medical isn't a passenger is it?"

  "No it's just a freezer pack. I didn't even ask what's in it. They didn't ask guaranteed delivery, so it must not be a panic run with somebody laying on the operating table. Edwards is on standby. Is he OK?"

  "Sounds good. You call Dave and I'll call Click and Edwards."

  April split the screen and called up Click. "Can you second the Happy, to shape for NLV in thirty minutes?" Satisfied she called Edwards. "Can you fly third, for dock guard on the Happy to NLV in thirty minutes? - Good. - You won't need to step off and I don't care what ya bring, as long as it is lethal and doesn't mass more than you do," she replied to his questions. She looked a question at Bob.

  "Dave's man Del says the Happy Lewis is ready to go. It has air, mass and deuterium," Bob said, but he had been laughing and carrying on with Del about something, that plainly wasn't business and wasn't shared with her.

  Del was crude and it bothered April that Bob liked someone who could be so vulgar. But Bob took her sour look wrong, thinking she doubted the ship status.

  "If it isn't ready to go you know Dave. If his man said it's ready when it's not, he'll strap the load on the guys back and point which direction he should jump at the lock," Bob said, without a trace of the previous humor. "I'll call UPS and FedEx too and offer them a cheap transfer, if they have anything ready to fly in the launch window."

  * * *

  Six hours later, docked at NLV, April was conscious she had limited time before they had to depart and hurried away from NLV Customs. Dockage at New Las Vegas was so busy they charged by the hour instead of the day, so they didn't dawdle at dock. She was moving a little faster through the crowd than most people liked, but she didn't bump anyone, so she got a few dirty looks, but nobody complained out loud to her, even though she passed a few groups by doing a dive and bounce off the opposite wall, when there were openings in the traffic.

  Young kids were expected to do that, but April was nearly fifteen and wearing a foreigner's pass that was only issued to adults. The corridors in New Las Vegas were different than Home. They were wider, the materials more luxurious and the colors were brighter, even in the zero G sections the tourists avoided. The corridors in spin were claustrophobic from the crush of humanity just before the holiday and the outspin area was still busier than it ever was at Home. There was just a whole lot more zero G cubic too, not all of it even attached. Some was a separate industrial area, like a warehouse district.

  At Home, there were a few recreational businesses like hand ball courts outside spin, but most of it was industrial and dockage. Here there were restaurants and even a small hotel for those that did not care to go in spin. The hotel got occasional Earthies, determined to sample the delights of zero G sex, but they soon moved to spin, when they found everything requires different skills in micro gravity and the spacer's favorite zero G bed, was a cross between a hammock and a sausage casing. Station born just rolled their eyes at their naiveté.

  There were also companies servicing the ship trade, with goods that could be moved straight to their customer's ship without the delay of having to come out of spin. The place April was headed to so fast, was The Superior Cheeseburger Factory. She was, as usual, hungry and should have an hour before her cargo was on board and she had to leave.

  Their new crewman Cletus, who preferred to be called Click, had the manifest. She had gone over with him and looked to make sure the customs officer was one she'd dealt with, before leaving him. Click shouldn't have any trouble. The manifest should be plenty for Customs since they were not subject to them, except as a courtesy. It was his second trip, so he should be learning how to handle things. She checked her clock in the corner of her spex, to make sure she was figuring correctly. Yes, she had time to grab lunch; breakfast was a long time ago and she was starved.

  The doorway to the eatery was completely adapted to zero G. It was a round portal, with a bright brass grab and swivel banister, surrounding the opening on four standoff posts. The decor was all dark green and gold, with Oak panels even outside on the corridor. April bounced a zig zag around a couple of slow movers and ended the last zag swinging into the opening off the brass rail, aiming straight across the restaurant to the counter instead of using a booth.

  The fellow who ran the place just held up two fingers, with an inquiring look on his face and she nodded enthusiastically. He only saw her every two or three weeks, but they had established her standard order was two cheeseburgers with everything, garlic fries and a big coffee. He turned his back and grabbed near a quarter kilo of ground sirloin in his hand and rough shaped it against his other palm. The sight of bare hands against raw meat alone would have closed his doors forever Earthside, but a health department was one of those bureaucracies that most orbital dwellers were still deliberately avoiding. However the community was still small enough, that if anyone had doubted the cleanliness of his hands his doors would be quickly closed for lack of business anyway. April noted he wiped his hands on a disposable wet towlette from the dispenser, every time he turned back to cook. Not only that, but a lot
of people now had a laser scanner in their com pads, that could detect offensive bacteria and quite a few were not shy to check everything they bought to eat. The roughed out patty went into a press grill with two heated platens and it squished the meat to the precise proper thickness and sizzled as it charred sear lines in the faces. He loaded a second press quickly and removed the first patty as soon as the second was started.

  April had never gotten him to tell her his name. Whenever she asked he always said, "You'd never pronounce it right anyway. Just call me Cheesy. Everybody does."

  The finishing touches involved sealing all the onions, mushrooms, olives and condiments, in a massive layer of cheese, that bound them to the patty and rendered the whole construction mechanically feasible in zero G. A real cheeseburger was as hard to make as a Sloppy Joe, so it didn't self destruct to a cloud of drifting parts in zero G. A proper Joe was held together by surface tension.

  Cheesy capped the second burger with a beautiful golden toasted sesame seed bun and spun around on the elastic toe strap he used to locate himself at the grills and deposited the basket in front of her. He waited to pin the last burger through with a hefty toothpick, so he could make a comment on her cooking preference. When he slid the skewer home as a finishing touch, he said "Moooo!" as it pierced the patty.

  "Oh good!" April shot back. "You finally got it rare enough."

  "If it was any rarer, we might be able to resuscitate it," he assured her.

  She took a huge bite and leaned way back on the stool. Hanging on with her toes under the grab bars and presenting both hands palm up to him in a big show, to forestall any conversation while she leisurely savored the first bite.

  "Nothing should be that good you horrible, horrible man. Why won't you come to Home and open a nice place in spin there?"

  "I like the spacer trade," he explained again, but he was smiling at her pleasure, behind a huge moustache, because he liked hearing how good his food was. "You don't have enough business outside of spin for me. Maybe when you guys get your act together and build a new station. Everybody keeps wondering when it's going to happen. If you don't hurry up, all the stable node points will be occupied and you'll be at an economic disadvantage in a less stable orbit."