Tanner had nodded.
“Well, then you’ve learned your first lesson. Never come empty handed.”
Tanner didn’t know if that meant the chief had his hand out for a payoff or if he had been letting him know that greasing the wheels at city hall with jobs and opportunity would make things go smoother.
Snapping back to the present, he said, “Here’s the thing, Dodger isn’t going to care that his goons are slowing down production. We pay him weekly, he takes his salvage daily and if we miss our schedule and go broke out here Great Star Line will just hire someone else to clean up this mess. That bastard will just shake down the next outfit that comes out here and keep making his money. We have to find a way to succeed.”
Ari got up and walked around the picnic table. The setting sun had cooled the air and she hugged herself. The cooking ‘bot cleared the dishes from the table and took them to be cleaned. Ari returned from their tent wearing a jacket and handed one to Eldridge. He stood up and pulled it on. They moved to a fire pit just past the edge of the canopy. Eldridge squatted and built a small fire. They fell into two of the chairs at the edge of the fire pit. Eldridge put his hands deep into his pockets and let the fire warm him.
“You’re right,” Ari said. “We need to speed up production. Any ideas?”
Eldridge nodded in the flickering light. “Yeah.” He pointed to his left. “Tomorrow I’m opening Pile 5 over there and bringing Bob down from the Corkscrew to run it. We’re going to redirect the salvage streams to your pile, Fred’s pile and Bob’s. We’re going to restrict the flow to Piles 2 & 3. There’s no sense dropping good material in those piles if it’s just going to sit there.”
“Can you open two more piles? Charlie is still up there. He could come down and supervise another one.”
“I thought about that but we don’t have enough ‘bots running to cut and carry pieces off Athena Star to feed two more streams. That would be ideal, though. Let me see what I can do about getting more of them on the job.”
They sat and watched the fire for a moment. Eldridge stared up at the stars, growing used to seeing unfamiliar constellations.
“You think they’ll catch on? Turtle and Daryl?”
Eldridge shrugged. “I don’t care. We have a job to do and I mean to see it finished. Dodger doesn’t get a say in how we do that. Turtle and Daryl can always work faster.”
Ari checked her mobi, and the bright light from the screen lit up the smooth cheekbones that framed her pretty face. Eldridge wondered how he had gotten so lucky.
“Why don’t we go to bed?” she said and stood up. “I’m exhausted.”
He slipped an arm around her waist as they walked back toward the tent. “That’s too bad. I think I still have some energy.”
She leaned up and kissed him. “Well, I might have a little energy left. What about the fire?”
Eldridge smiled and thought about what had happened earlier in the day. The ‘bot that had cooked dinner busied itself with packing up the kitchen. “Yeah, maybe I’d better take care of that. I didn’t get the coding done for the firefighting so the whole place could go up, and he would make pancakes.”
“See you in a few,” she said.
Eldridge kicked the fire apart with his boots and poured water on the glowing embers. As the light died down and darkness claimed the worksite, he heard something howl in the distance. Epsilon Eridani III had predators, he knew. Chief Bell had warned him about the local version of bobcats. They had deep purple fur which hid them well in the dark. He turned to the ‘bot doing clean up to give it an order but a moving light in the direction of the Athena Star caught his attention.
He watched as it played over the wreckage near the dissected engines. The white light moved along the base of the wreck and stopped near a ground level hatch before disappearing inside. Eldridge watched as the interior lit up and the light faded as it moved away from the entry point.
“Goddamn thieves.” He grabbed a shotgun from one of the storage lockers and rushed over to the float bike. Then he stopped and turned to the cooking ‘bot.
“Tell Ari I saw someone messing around on the wreck and I went to investigate. You’re on guard duty.”
“Affirmative,” it said. “I will deliver the message.”
Eldridge put on a helmet and the night vision engaged by default. He gunned the motor and tore off like a rocket across the distance between his site and the wreck. A plume of loose dust blew up behind him.
He got to the Athena Star and weaved between piles of salvaged material. Coming to a stop, he dismounted the bike and took off the helmet. He grabbed a flashlight and the shotgun and made his way to the broken hatch where he had seen someone enter.
Eldridge didn’t hear anything. The intruder in the Athena Star may have heard him approach on the bike but he didn’t care. He just wanted to be rid of them. Shining his light on the ground around the hatch, he moved inside.
A large cargo hold was located just inside the hatch but it had been emptied days ago. Anyone hunting for valuables would be sorely disappointed. He saw a light move toward the rear of the large space.
“I saw you come in here,” he said loudly and his voice echoed off the metal walls and bounced around the open space. “Step out where I can see you.”
No one answered. Eldridge shined the light along the walls. He adjusted his stance to keep his balance on the metal decking because it was tilted due to the wreck. He heard a scrape behind him, like a boot on metal and he turned.
Something hit him across the back and drove the air from his lungs. His light skittered away and pointed toward a corner of the hold. He collapsed on the metal decking and grunted as another blow landed on his back. Someone grabbed his shotgun from him and he heard the action being worked. Shells fell around him on the decking and then he heard a grunt. A few seconds later he heard something that sounded like his gun land with an angry clatter against one of the walls. He curled up in a ball, anticipating another strike but it didn’t come. Instead, something jabbed him in the back and his body went rigid as a shock passed through it. He inhaled sharply as pain raced through him and lost consciousness.
Chapter 4
Someone banged on the door of Nathan’s apartment. He muted the entertainment system and set down his drink. It might have been early for whiskey but his feelings didn’t leave him a lot of reasons not to have a few. Waiting for word about whether he would be working or not made him cranky.
He answered the door and saw his landlord, an Armenian immigrant, standing in the hallway. The burly man sported a stained white tank top that showed off beefy arms slowly going flabby. Dark curly chest hair sprouted from beneath it like weeds.
“Hello, Mr. Baliozian. What can I do for you today?”
“You pay rent, Mr. Teller,” he said in broken English. “You are two months behind so you pay today.”
“No problem,” Nathan said with a smile. “I’ll have it in your account by the end of business today.”
“You have ship, no? Big ship? Why are you here drinking instead of working? You should be working.”
Nathan gritted his teeth and turned to see the whiskey bottle on the coffee table clearly visible from the landlord’s vantage point. He shifted his stance. “I just got back from a job on Mars. I should get paid today and the first thing I’ll do is pay you.”
Mr. Baliozian waved a dismissive hand at him. “Mars? You no go to Mars. You sit right here all the time. You need job. I been in this country three years and I own two apartment buildings.” He held up two fingers to emphasize the point. “Real estate my father told me, ‘own real estate.’” The landlord laughed and his gut bounced up and down. “Mars. You putting me on.”
“I’m really not. We just got back a couple days ago.”
Mr. Baliozian’s face hardened. “I no care what you do a couple days ago. You pay me two month rent today or
tomorrow you living somewhere else. You understand?”
Nathan nodded. “I understand. Now, if you’ll excuse me I need to see about my next job.”
The landlord threw his hands up and walked off down the hall. He yelled over his shoulder, “Next job? You need ‘a’ job. Stop being so lazy.” Nathan closed the door but he could still hear the landlord when he said, “And stop drinking in day time.”
Nathan collapsed back onto the couch and rested a foot on the coffee table in front of him. His mobi chimed with an incoming message. He picked up the communication device and scrolled to the new message. Bao had accepted his proposal for the Athena Star job. The message also had a note stating that the invoice for the Hell’s Breath job had been paid. He breathed a sigh of relief and sent out a group message to the crew, instructing them that they would be leaving tomorrow morning and to prep the Blue Moon Bandit.
“Told you we had a job,” he said to the empty apartment.
Nathan expanded the display and virtual keyboard of the mobi to make it more like a traditional workstation and easier to use. He logged into his bank’s site and checked the balance in the business account. It might be positive now but he sighed, knowing it wouldn’t stay that way.
He pulled up a list of the bills incurred during the last job. The price of solid hydrogen fuel had risen again and he had an insurance payment due on the Bandit. Big Bulk Mart had also sent him an invoice for the provisions they had stocked the ship with. He paid all three and regarded the remaining balance.
He ran the numbers to figure out what the shares for each crew member would be for the most recent job. The program split the balance according to the default settings, two shares for him and one each for the remainder of the crew: Cole, Duncan, Marla and Richie. The split seemed smaller than he liked.
He had an excellent crew and he knew they could all find work with other ships doing other jobs. Higher pay rates kept them on the Blue Moon Bandit, that and the freedom that came with repossessing starships. If he wanted to stay in business he needed them. He could always find other pilots, engineers or muscle but anyone he found would be inferior to the crew he had now, and he would have to go to the trouble of training them. In this line of work, he wanted people working for him that he could count on. Keeping them meant paying them a decent amount of credits even if it meant he earned less.
A quick look around his apartment proved that things could be better. He’d downgraded to an efficiency one-bedroom place in a neighborhood that was either ripe for gentrification or demolition.
Nathan needed better cash flow but Milky Way Repossessions had competitors now eating into their business. He knew of three other firms engaged in starship repo work at least part-time and their competition had driven rates down. When he’d started the business, it had been easy to carve out a niche for himself. Those days were long gone now that other people had discovered you could earn decent credits snatching starships from folks behind on their loans.
Turning back to the display he reduced his shares from two to one and saw the split rise incrementally among the rest of the crew. Hopefully it would keep them satisfied until the next job came along. He considered his decision for a moment, then, like the last half dozen times he’d faced this same dilemma, he pressed the enter key and paid his crew. The business account balance dropped to almost zero.
Next, he checked his personal account and saw he had enough to catch up on the rent so he transferred credits to Mr. Baliozian. At the very least he had a place to live for the next month. If worst came to worst he could move onto the Bandit.
— «» —
“What are we doing here?” Cole asked with a yawn. “It’s early.”
He and Nathan sat in a float car outside the offices of Crater Salvage in Go City. The office itself appeared to be a cheap chrome and glass store front in a strip mall. From where they sat, Nathan could see two people inside, a woman sitting at a desk on the right and a man sitting at a desk across the room from her. A small sign hung above the door. Nathan considered that it was similar to the office he kept for Milky Way Repossessions.
“When I spoke to Bao I got the feeling this whole thing could be a misunderstanding over some outstanding bills,” Nathan said. “I’m just wondering if it’s worth flying all the way out to Epsilon Eridani. Why not stop here first and ask some questions?”
“You think Bao hasn’t done that?”
Nathan shrugged. “He said they’ve called over here and spoken to someone. Sometimes you have to look a person in the eye.”
“So we’re going in?”
“Yep, but before we do, I wanted to ask you about something. Back on Mars, did you see Bone Daddy and his lady using that stuff?”
“Yeah.”
“What was it?”
“It’s called ‘Diamond K’. It’s the latest version of synthetic amphetamines. My buddies in the marshal’s office say it’s really hit big in the last few years.”
“Huh,” Nathan said. “That explains Luscious being so skinny.”
“Yeah, the physical effects of using it are similar to what you see with other drugs; broken teeth from chewing the crystal, dehydration, loss of appetite and a general feeling of not giving a shit about anything but scoring. This stuff is wicked, though.”
“Why?”
“It’s cheap, it’s easy to manufacture and users don’t develop a tolerance. It drives law enforcement and drug counselors crazy. If you get a good cook who really understands how to properly make the stuff, they produce a product that feels like the first high every time. The users chew it and the Dopamine rush in their brain hits them hard, over and over again. It’s some deadly stuff. I’m not surprised to see someone like Luscious using it. As soon as I saw him I knew he was on something.”
“Yeah, he didn’t look healthy.”
Cole grunted. “That stuff will kill you. It’s hard on your system, especially your heart. Kids in their twenties who use it a lot drop dead from heart attacks or cirrhosis of the liver or kidney failure. Their body heat rises and starts to bake their brain. It will also drive you bat-shit insane and paranoid. You start thinking everyone is out to get you.”
Nathan stared at him. “That sounds pretty bad.”
“Well, it’s made from industrial chemicals like reactor coolant, potassium and ammonia hydroxide.”
“And people eat it?”
“Yes they do. I understand the high is potent enough that it’s difficult to describe. I mean, it makes you impotent so imagine how good this stuff makes you feel that you’re willing to give up sex.”
Nathan considered that for a moment. “Nope, I’m not doing that.”
Cole smiled. “Yeah, you gave it up the old-fashioned way, by not being able to get any.”
Nathan ignored him. “You said it didn’t cost much. How cheap is it?”
“Ten credits a gram or so. That’s what makes it so prevalent.” He studied Nathan for moment. “What’s with all the questions? Are we getting into the drug business?”
Nathan grunted. “No, business isn’t that bad yet. Let’s go inside and talk to these folks.”
They got out of the car and approached the office. A young woman greeted them as they entered. A small placard on her desk had the name Molly Stern on it. She had red hair and a nice smile. “Good morning gentlemen. Welcome to Crater Salvage. What can we do for you?”
Nathan nodded and smiled as he introduced himself and Cole. “I’m here to speak with Lewis Mairn.”
“That’s me,” the man behind them said. Nathan turned toward him. Lewis Mairn had a comb over and a generous belly. He wore a mustard yellow short sleeved shirt and glasses. He stood up and offered his hand. Nathan shook it. He pointed to a couple chairs in front of his desk and they sat down.
“Mr. Mairn, I represent Federal Trust and Loan.” Nathan watched as the man’s smile faltered. “The
y have engaged our services to repossess the salvage vessel Corkscrew for non-payment on the loan. I understand Crater Salvage is currently using the vessel in the recovery of the starliner Athena Star.”
Mairn nodded. “That’s correct.”
“Mr. Mairn, we will be leaving shortly. Before we go to the trouble of flying ten light years and shutting down your operation, are you certain this trouble isn’t due to some misunderstanding that could be cleared up today with a payment to the bank?”
Lewis Mairn rocked back in his chair and picked up a pen. He twirled it between his fingers. He considered them for a moment, staring from Nathan to Cole and back again. He finally smiled.
“Captain Teller, it’s my understanding that all payments required by the contract have been made. I think what we have here is a miscommunication.”
Nathan raised an eyebrow. “You think the bank who loaned you money doesn’t understand the repayment schedule?”
Marin held his hands palms up. “That appears to be the case. You see, we invoice Great Star Lines, they pay us and then we pay the bank. We haven’t received payment from Great Star Lines so there’s no way we could make a payment to the bank. They don’t get paid unless we do.” He sat up a little straighter and smiled, obviously pleased with himself.
“So the whole thing is just a misunderstanding with Great Star Lines?”
“That’s right,” Mairn said. “Frankly, I’m surprised the bank has gone to so much trouble. I think I’ll contact Bao Zhang and put this whole thing to rest. I’m sorry he’s gotten you mixed up in this.”
Nathan leaned forward and rested an arm on the man’s desk. “Lewis, I’m leaving soon to go get that ship unless I hear from Bao. Coming here and speaking with you is just a courtesy and not one I usually extend. Whatever you have going on, I suggest you get it straightened out before I break orbit. Once that happens things get a lot more expensive.” He stood up and Cole rose with him. He turned and nodded to Molly. “Nice to meet you, ma’am.”
They walked through the parking lot and got back in the float car. Nathan saw Lewis Mairn clocking them from inside the office. “He’s sweating. Did you catch that?”
Bad Rock Beat Down (The Milky Way Repo Series Book 2) Page 5
