Running With Argentine

by William Lee Gordon

  Argentine was in a foul mood as they walked back to the ship.

  All business had long concluded on this part of the platform; the lighting was dimmed and not a soul was in sight.

  He stopped abruptly.

  He glanced over to the darkened narrow corridor between two shops. He was sure he'd just heard a muffled sob, and then… "Last chance, Porcelain Man. Tell us where they are or I'll break the rest your fingers!"

  As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, Argentine made out two men standing over the huddled form of… a teenage boy?

  Maybe the whiskey was still affecting his judgment, or maybe it had just been that kind of day… Looking back on it, Argentine would never know for sure. But for whatever reason, sparing only the quickest of glances at Lieutenant Stark, he sprinted into the dark corridor without a second thought…

  ΔΔΔ

  Argentine reached up and tried to move his tooth.

  He wasn't sure, but he thought there might be a little wiggle in it. Damn, that second son of a bitch could hit hard!

  Another thing he wasn't sure of was the appraising look that Lieutenant Stark was giving him. It was almost as if he was reevaluating his companion.

  At any rate, Argentine had been thankful for his help.

  He'd like to think that the reason he’d raced into the corridor was because it was the right thing to do. But he knew himself well enough to know it was much more than that. He hadn't lost his temper like this in years. It wasn't about saving the boy so much as it was him taking out his frustrations on some deserving punks.

  Except the punks had turned out to not be so punkish after all.

  He spit a little blood out of his mouth and said, "Those guys knew how to fight."

  Those guys were currently lying unconscious and the lieutenant was kneeling down next to what was, indeed, a teenage boy.

  "I'd say they were highly trained," he responded.

  "Is he conscious?" Argentine asked as he nodded down at the boy.

  "He will be soon," the lieutenant responded. "I'm about to set his finger."

  He yanked and a loud scream pierced the air.

  As soon as he was sure the boy wasn't going to hyperventilate, Argentine spoke to him, "What did you do to piss off your friends here?"

  Blinking back tears the boy finally said, "They're no friends of mine. They… Wait! Stop him!"

  While the boy had been talking one of the assailants had scrambled to his feet and was running away.

  The best Argentine could tell, the other one was still out cold.

  By now, the boy was sitting up and leaning with his back against the corridor wall. He was shaking his head back and forth and through the tears declaring, "What are we going to do? My God, what have I done?"

  It suddenly dawned on Argentine that the boy probably wasn't as old as he'd first thought.

  "Son, how old are you?"

  "I'm almost 14," he stammered.

  "You're awfully tall for 14," the Lieutenant remarked.

  "I was raised on Aerial," the boy said, as if that explained everything.

  When no one responded he added, "It's a low gravity world."

  Talking seemed to be calming the boy down a little so Argentine continued…

  "Now, do you want to tell us why these… guys were attacking you?"

  "Because we're Porcelain People. That's what they call us because they say our bones are brittle and we can be pushed around…

  "But it's not true! We take supplements and our bones are almost as hard as anyone else's – and we are proud and strong-willed! No one pushes us around!"

  Argentine grinned, despite himself.

  "They hate us," he continued. "They're always picking on us and now it's getting really bad."

  "Look, kid…"

  "My name is Nicu."

  "Okay, Nicu… You've got to be more careful. If we hadn't been walking back to our ship…"

  "You've got a ship?"

  When they didn't respond, he continued…

  "You have to save me!" he declared. "Now that you beat them up they are going to come after me! I'm dead unless you help me!"

  "You don't mean that. Surely you've got a mother? What would she think?"

  "No, you don't understand," the boy said while starting to tear up again. "They'll be coming after her too! We're all dead unless you help us!"

  "Hold on a second," Lieutenant Stark said as he placed a hand on the boy's shoulder.

  "Just who are these guys and why are you so sure they'll be coming after you?"

  "You didn't know?" the boy asked with wide eyes.

  Argentine wasn't sure if the sinking feeling in his gut had started before or after the boy finished explaining…

  "Those guys are Asperian Military. And now that you've let one of them go… They're going to be looking for payback."

  Argentine tilted his head back and closed his eyes.

  "Please Mister; you've got to take us with you…"

  Without moving he said, "Sure, kid. Why not?"

  ΔΔΔ

  Argentine had never before seen Lieutenant Stark angry.

  They'd walked back to the ship in silence until the lieutenant had grabbed his arm in the darkened terminal in front of the Pelican’s boarding hatch.

  "What's wrong, Lieutenant?"

  Argentine wasn't sure, but he thought the lieutenant's eyes were narrowed conspicuously.

  "I'm trying to figure out just how big of a mistake I made teaming up with you," he responded.

  "Are you insane…? Or just stupid?"

  "Look Lieutenant, I'm really not in the mood. In case you haven't noticed, it's not been a good day."

  "Well, in case you've forgotten, Captain… We've already got the Asperian Police on our backs, and now you've gone and pissed off the military. What's next? Can we get the firefighters and customs agents to hate us too?"

  "Oh, get off it, Stark! The corridor was dark and I doubt that military jerk has any idea who we are."

  "Maybe or maybe not… But do you really think they're not going to be able to track that kid and his family back to our ship? What are we going to do then?"

  "You're welcome to jump ship anytime," Argentine said.

  "What? Here? After the hole you just dug us into? I may be crazy for teaming up with you but I'm not stupid…

  "I'll take my leave soon enough, but first we have to get away from this planet and find someplace that's never heard of us. That's assuming, of course, that after this they'll even give us permission to undock."

  "What would you have had me do?" Argentine asked in exasperation. "He was just a kid!"

  The lieutenant just shook his head.

  "Besides, I doubt very seriously that the kid and his parents are going to show up. He'll get home and they'll calm him down… We'll probably never see him again."

  ΔΔΔ

  "Argentine!"

  The intercom sounded again…

  "Argentine! Can you hear me?"

  "Chief? Is that you?" Argentine asked as he fumbled to set up in his bed.

  "Argentine, you need to get down here."

  "What time is it?"

  "The terminator hasn't caught up to our orbit yet, so it's still before sunrise on the platform – but you need to get over here, now!"

  "What…? Where is here?"

  "I'm at the terminal-side boarding hatch."

  "What's the problem?"

  "I've got twenty-seven people here that claim to be a family you offered passage to…"

  Argentine closed his eyes and slowly laid back down…

  "Shit," he whispered to no one.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  The New Normal

  Platform 12

  The crew found themselves once again packed into the ship's mess.

  It had been a hectic morning, to say the least. Fortunately, because the People's Republic of Chezden had believed in multitasking their space navy's ships, two of their six holds were pressurized. One of them had
even been designed for conversion into a troop barracks.

  Or, at least, that's what the ship’s computers said. It turned out that no one on board had ever seen it set up in that configuration.

  The chief, however, had finally figured out where the bunkbeds and portable toilets were stored. He'd spent the morning supervising their assembly.

  The Petulengro family had been cooperative and eager to help.

  "Nice people," the chief said. "On the one hand I can tell they're scared to death, but on the other they seem cheerful enough. There's not a one of them that complained about being put to work and they didn't even grumble when I told them they would have to learn how to contribute to the ship's maintenance."

  "Now, if you could just get the bloody blokes to contribute to the ship's food supply everything would be hunky-dory," said Barry, who'd just recently found out he'd been assigned the secondary duty of ship's purser.

  "Did you ask them?" Argentine wanted to know.

  "Of course I did, you bloody fool… Uh, I mean… No disrespect intended… But yes, I did ask…"

  Barry apparently didn't like the expression on Argentine's face so he hurriedly continued…

  "They seemed shocked that I would ask them to contribute financially and then asked if we were in the habit of holding refugees hostage and confiscating what few worldly possessions they had left."

  Nobody had an answer for that. Their only response was a collective sigh.

  Argentine had been studiously avoiding the gaze of Lieutenant Stark.

  When they finally locked eyes the room became deathly quiet. The chief wasn't sure, but Sami would later swear that it was the lieutenant who first cracked a hint of a smile.

  Argentine's glare started contorting on his face… Within a few moments, the whole crew was laughing. Not just, ha ha… But with holding their sides, leaning on the table, wet-eyed laughter that left them all but incapacitated.

  Once Argentine had caught his breath, but before all the laughter had subsided, he caught the lieutenant's gaze again. He nodded once.

  The lieutenant nodded twice in silent response…

  ΔΔΔ

  A few hours later Argentine, the chief, and the lieutenant were gathered in the captain's cabin.

  "We have to get out of here," the chief said.

  "I concur," added the lieutenant.

  Argentine had been half holding his breath all morning hoping not to have a visit from the Asperian military. So far, they'd been lucky; as far as they knew they still had full clearance to come and go as they pleased.

  "We need someplace to go," Argentine mused out loud.

  "Who cares?" said the chief. "It's time to fly the coop."

  "I'm not disagreeing," said Argentine. "But I want to be as smart as we can about this. The only person here that's really been friendly to us has been Guildsman Darrin Martin. I'm going to give him a quick call and see if he can't recommend a destination that might be friendly to our circumstance."

  "You'll be leaving a trail… If the police, or the military, or anyone else on the planet wants to track us down you will have left a loose end," grumbled Lieutenant Stark.

  Argentine's voice took on a sudden confidence…

  "If he doesn't give us a recommendation, there'll be no thread to follow. If he does, we’ll have a big head start. There aren't any perfect choices…

  "Chief, get the boat ready to sail."

  "Yes sir!" said the chief for the first time ever.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Lady Luck

  Platform 12

  "Guildsman Martin!" Argentine said into the video feed.

  "I truly appreciate you taking the time for my call. I need to ask for your help…"

  "I know exactly why you called, Captain Argentine," said the smiling image of the guildsman.

  "You do?"

  "Of course I do."

  Still smiling, he continued, "I've been in this business a long time, Captain. But I must say, you not only move fast but also seem a bit impatient. I’ve barely finished confirming the job posting. As a matter of fact, I was just getting ready to call you."

  Now Argentine was totally lost, but he somehow didn't think it would be politic to show his confusion…

  "Go on," he said.

  "As you obviously know, a long-haul job came in just this morning. It's a load of raw ore and what makes it unique is that there's a bonus attached to the contract for any processing that gets done en-route. They also made it clear that they're not going to require that the guild insure the load."

  After waiting for Argentine's reaction and getting none, he continued, "The contract also stipulates that the shipper will be sending a passenger to accompany the load…

  "A passenger that happens to be qualified in the engineering of ore processing."

  "That's… convenient," Argentine mused. "Ah, and the issue of the flag?"

  After a stretched out moment of silence the guildsman said, "When the contract order first came in I thought of you. So, of course, I checked again just to make sure and lo and behold… The flag is gone.

  "But, of course, you knew that…" he finished with a knowing smile.

  “So, Captain. Can we start loading your cargo?"

  ΔΔΔ

  "The cargo hatches are sealed," Chief West announced to the bridge.

  The load of ore wasn't small, but it fit nicely in four of the Pelican’s six freight bays.

  "What now?" asked Barry.

  "We wait for our passenger," Argentine said.

  A view of the now nearly empty docking gate occupied the viewing screen in front of the Captain’s Bench as well as the screens at the other various bridge stations. Everyone was anxious.

  Like all of the platform's open spaces, their terminal gate’s lighting was dim when it was after hours and not being used.

  It made for an eerie view.

  Rory was in engineering and the lieutenant had Gossip double checking cargo security and load distribution.

  That left the five of them on the bridge… with not much to do.

  "Barry, you're ready to get us out of here, right?"

  "You’re bloody right I am! I've been updating orbital traffic every five minutes."

  "Sami?"

  "I've got us plotted all the way through to the first skip point, First," she responded.

  Argentine looked at the chief…

  "The ship’s been ready to go since this morning," he responded

  Before he could even ask, Lieutenant Stark said, "I've got Gossip checking the load metrics for the third time."

  After a few more moments of silence…

  "So what do we know about this ore processing engineer?" the chief asked.

  Argentine just shrugged.

  Barry finally spoke up, "Still no ideas on how we got our flag removed?"

  Since it wasn't a subject Argentine really wanted to talk about, he just grunted.

  "I think everyone's being silly," Sami spoke up.

  "Oh right, you don't think we should be just a bit knocked off kilter by the anonymous activities of some fairy godmother?" Barry rebuked.

  Argentine looked up sternly. He was starting to get used to Barry's ways, but he didn't like anyone taking that tone with Sami.

  "Who else would have the ability to hack into the Police Enforcer’s database and clear our flag?" she insisted.

  "And why would she do that?" asked the chief.

  "I don't know. Maybe she wants to leave Asperia?"

  "This is where she was trying to get to…" Argentine reminded them.

  "And we're supposed to believe it's just a coincidence that a long-haul load that's perfectly tailored for us pops up at the same time?" Barry asked.