“Doesn’t the ship have inertial dampers or something?”
“Stop watching Star Trek,” Jrill said. “We have artificial gravity, but it has a 0.037 refresh rate. That’s more than enough time to splatter you against the view screen in twenty-grav evasive maneuvers.”
First grabbed the ends of her five-point crash harness and hurriedly snapped it together without another word.
“Do we have clearance from Space Traffic Control, Fenax?”
“Granted. Departure window opening in ten, nine, eight…”
“Clear umbilicals. Retract the All-Seal. Stand by docking clamps.”
The Goes Where I’m Towed shuddered gently as its connections to Junktion popped free of the hull one by one.
“Three, two, one, departure window open.”
“Release,” Jrill ordered.
Outside, the two robust docking clamps in the bow that held the Goes to her host station like a determined tick snapped open. In the view screen, Bay Ninety-Four retreated quickly as the centripetal force of the station’s spin threw the ship clear.
First expected to be thrown into her harness under the sudden acceleration. Instead, the opposite happened. She found herself weightless, only held in her chair by the five-point crash web.
She was flying. Floating.
“We’re clear to maneuver,” Fenax said.
“Head for the Junktion high-space portal and whip it,” Jrill said.
Gravity returned like a hammer and slammed First back into the bottom of her seat.
“Yippee ki-yay, motherfu—”
“Language, young lady,” Hashin said from his own seat as he applied some sort of medicated patch to his upper arm.
“But how did you even know…”
“We’ve all seen Die Hard. We have Christmas out here, too, you know. It’s mostly a retail-driven holiday, but then, what holiday isn’t?”
“Assembly space celebrates Jesus Christ’s birth?” First asked incredulously.
“Who?”
“Oh, thank God,” First said.
“Making transition now,” Fenax said, ignoring everyone.
First reached into her purse and retrieved her pair of 3-D glasses. They’d been awfully tough to find so far from Earth. Secondhand, slightly scratched, and with a paper clip holding one of the temple arms in place, they’d still cost her the better part of a week’s earnings to get them off a passing human traveler. But without them, the half of Junktion permanently floating in the extradimensional reality of hyperspace was inaccessible to her. The human brain didn’t do well wandering around in four dimensions, and it wasn’t long before one found themselves trying to practice yoga in a torus.
She had no idea how the other species handled it so well. Well, maybe the Fenax. But everyone else was a mystery.
With nary a ripple or a whisper, the Goes Where I’m Towed and her crew left their universe behind and moved one floor up. “Transit complete,” Fenax announced. “Exiting Junktion’s exclusion zone … now.”
“Lay in course for our rendezvous point with Space for Rant and squeeze the engines by the gonads,” Jrill said.
Even through the artificial gravity, something deep inside First’s inner ear felt the ship lunge forward like a politician with a campaign donation dangling in front of him. She could read and contextualize enough of the displays and status readouts to know they were burning up space at something like three hundred gravities. It was simply eye-watering acceleration.
“What happens if the antigrav fails?” First asked.
“The counter-grav protecting us is generated by the engines themselves,” Hashin answered. “They’re all part of the same system. So they’d go down together and we’d just be on the float, theoretically.”
“And if that theory doesn’t hold up?”
“Then they’ll be able to strain our remains through screens fine enough to filter out individual viruses. Don’t worry. If that happens, none of us will even realize it.”
“That’s not as comforting as you might think.”
“Sorry,” Hashin said. “I’m probably due for another Empathen injection. I’ve been tapering off for a week now.”
“Well, at least I know the company’s prescription drug plan is solid,” First quipped. “Why do you call yourselves the Subassembly, anyway?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Jrill said from the command chair. “We’re made up of a Nelihexu, Turemok, Ish, Lividite, and Fenax. Five of the six races on the Assembly Council. We’re only missing a Grenic, and that’s because they’d only be useful during a job if we really needed to drop a big rock on someone.”
First bristled. She’d grown very fond of Quarried Themselves after living with them for the last few months and felt the need to defend her roommate.
“Grenic take the long view on things, that’s all.”
Jrill looked at First with what probably passed for a smirk on her beak among her people. “You do know that in Grenic time you just moved in this morning, right? How have you already bonded with them? They’re not even between sleep cycles yet.”
“You’re wrong,” First said, afraid she wasn’t but unwilling to show a gram of uncertainty in the face of one of the people who’d tried to torch Earth. “They watch, their bodies are slow, but their minds aren’t. Live with one for a month and you’ll know.”
“Next time I’m in the market for a new end table, I’ll consider it.”
First sank into her chair and let the matter drop. For the next few hours, the only thing to watch was the plot as the intercept timer counted down to zero, so First busied herself uploading patches and viruses to her deck from the ship’s library. Anything they had on Transom Shipyards or any of their suppliers, which was quite a lot as it happened.
At the midway point, they flipped the ship around and decelerated just as hard to bring themselves to a complete stop. Once their velocity was spent, the Goes Where I’m Towed hung motionless in the ethereal weirdness of high-space, a spider waiting for a very big, very expensive fly.
“Sheer,” Jrill said into the intercom. “We’re running a Broken Wing con. Foul up the main reactor output and leak some hard radiation out our purge vents. Take a couple of counter-grav modules offline, but not too far offline. We may need a snatch-and-sprint at any moment.”
“Got it.”
“Hashin, a universal standard distress call, if you please,” Jrill said.
“Omnidirectional or tightbeam?”
“High-gain cone centered on the Space for Rant’s course. I want them to think we’re filling space with the signal, but I don’t want to attract anyone outside that cone before they get to us.”
“Sending distress call now.”
The overhead lights flickered for a moment, triggering several alerts throughout the cave.
“What’s that?” First asked.
Hashin waved away her concern. “Just Sheer dirtying up main power. We’re disabled, remember?”
“So what’s the plan for when they pull over to help? Magnetic harpoon? Carbon nanotube net? Immobilizer pulse?”
“Actually,” Jrill injected, “I thought we’d wait until we’re invited aboard, then you pretend to throw a temper tantrum and lock yourself inside their command cave until we arrive at port.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“The old tricks are the best tricks, and it’s been a while since we had a juvenile to run this scam with.”
“I’m not a juvenile. I’ll be eighteen in a month!”
“Is that supposed to mean something? You’re a kid, and you’re playing the part, or we’ll drop you back off in the promenade to stack your cups. Got it?”
First crossed her arms in a huff and glared at the Turemok.
“That’s the spirit. You’re halfway to a tantrum already. Just keep that face glued on and you’ll do great.”
“Get bent.”
“Not to interrupt,” Fenax said from their jar, “but a ship matching the description of our
contract just appeared on long-range sensors.”
“Have they seen us yet?” Jrill said.
“No active scans. No change in their course or speed.”
Jrill swiveled around in her command chair to consult with Hashin. “They’ve gotten the distress call by now, yes?”
“No doubt.”
Jrill drummed her claws on the armrest. “So they’re ignoring it.”
“So it would seem.”
“Karking socialites,” Jrill muttered. “Refuse to see anyone else’s problems unless there’s money to be made or another rung of their ladder to climb. Fenax, how long until they’re inside what should be our sensor range?”
“Another ten rakims and Space for Rant will be inside average civilian scanner range.”
“Hashin, wait ten rakims once they’re inside that perimeter, then send a personalized message directly to them on tightbeam. Maybe they’ll be more inclined to help if they know we’ve spotted them and can report them for refusing to answer a distress call.”
“If they don’t just blow us up to avoid the potential trouble,” Fenax said.
“But it’s a pleasure yacht,” First said. “So it’s unarmed, right?”
Jrill laughed. “It’s registered unarmed. But then, so are we.”
“We’re not?” Hashin and Jrill just looked at each other with telling grins. “I see,” First said.
“Sending tightbeam now,” Hashin said.
Jrill steepled her fingers. “Fenax, prepare a thruster ‘misfire’ that will push us into their course if this doesn’t convince them to do the right thing.”
“You mean to ram them?”
“No, just enough drift to force them into a course correction. Put the little pile of glot on record for not only ignoring a distress call but crossing the street to avoid it. Maybe we can win a judgment against him even if Soolie’s squad gets to the ship before we do.”
Hashin smiled. “Working all the angles. I’m impressed, Jrill. The boss is rubbing off on you.”
“Gotta keep the hatchlings fed.”
An alert chimed at Hashin’s console. “Won’t be necessary. They’re hailing us.”
“Probably had to get his pants back on,” Jrill said. “Best desperation faces, everyone.”
“We don’t all have faces,” Fenax said.
“Then twitch a tentacle nervously. Hashin, answer the hail, forward view screen.” The Lividite nodded and dashed off a couple of keystrokes. A moment later, the entire forward bulkhead of the command cave lit up with a holographic projection so clear and sharp, First thought it must be a portal into the other ship’s bridge she could stand up and walk through. Standing dead center in the image was a beanstalk of a creature with three arms, three legs, and a face with three eyes arranged symmetrically around a mouth that looked like a black sock full of broken glass.
“Hi! Sorry for the slowlow. Had to get my pants back on. You bipeds have it so easy.”
“Oh, thank Dar you’re here, kind sir,” Jrill said, hiding a grimace. “We were on our way to Korovax when one of our antigrav nodes blew. We tried to come about for Junktion, but a feedback surge blew out a capacitor bank, and our main reactor took damage. We can’t shut it down, and hard radiation is saturating compartment after compartment!”
“Whoooa, that sounds like, bad, right?” the Sulican said. “Like, heft lift stuff.”
“It’s potentially lethal,” Jrill said flatly. “You … know what radiation is, right?”
“I know it’s nova digger, love. So you’ll all be like, macro whacked if I don’t help, jala?”
Jrill looked around the rest of the bridge. Hashin and First just shrugged. Fenax quivered in a similar fashion. “Uh, yeah, macro whacked. We’re still clean here, but our engineer has already been contaminated.”
“Uh, wow. That’s, like, total mood shred.”
“Sir,” Jrill said. “I don’t mean to be impertinent, but … is there a commander of the ship I could talk to?”
“You’re lookin’ at him, tweak beak!” the Sulican said. “Just me and the partaaaay. Rest of the ship is automated. The controlocker don’t even have chairs in it. Ain’t that hyper?”
“Macro,” Jrill said. “Can we come over for the partaaay? So we don’t die?”
“Sure thing, kula wing. Sending an All-Seal your way now. Fermented’s free, distilled’s a fee.”
The link cut out.
Jrill looked around at the rest of her cave crew. “What just happened?”
First put up her hand. “I think we just got invited to a kegger.”
CHAPTER 6
Handset pressed close to his face, Loritt watched the playback from the Space for Rant’s internal security feed with delight. First played the part of a tantrum-prone teenager to perfection, putting herself right in Jrill’s face, which Loritt was certain wasn’t an act, before throwing herself, arms flailing, into the controlocker and sealing the door.
Once inside, she leaned into a corner and, with her hacker’s deck, repelled every attempt by the clueless debtor to override the lockout.
For six hours.
It was a masterful performance, matched only by the sight of Soolie’s goons swarming up the gangway expecting to take legal possession of the ship, just to come face-to-face with Jrill’s glot-eating grin standing by the hatch.
Loritt cherished the sight. Whether in spite of the eventual cost, or because of it, he couldn’t say.
“What’s the matter, Loritt?” asked Kula, his date for most evenings. One of the few other Nelihexu to live on Junktion, she was quite enchanting.
“Oh, nothing, my dear. Sorry for the distraction. Just checking in on my employees. Are you ready to order?”
“Chessel!” Soolie the Fin shouted from across the courtyard, then angled over to their table. “You old pile of spares. How long has it been?”
“Entirely too short,” Loritt said.
“Just like me!” the diminutive Umulat said as he invited himself to sit down. “Who’s your friend? She’s a lovely collection.”
“Kula, this is Soolie the Fin, a small-time criminal with aspirations of legitimacy.”
Kula looked Soolie up and down. It didn’t take long. “Emphasis on ‘small.’”
“And a sharp tongue,” Soolie said, all three eyes twinkling. “Hope she doesn’t cut you anywhere too sensitive, Chessel.”
“Loritt doesn’t need to worry about getting cut if he gets too close,” Kula purred.
“Kula, dear. Could you find our waiter?” Loritt asked. “He’s been gone quite some time, and I’m famished.”
“Gladly.” Kula uncoiled from her seat and made a show of walking off. Loritt couldn’t help but watch the performance.
“Not my glass of bitter root, but I can see why you like her,” Soolie said. “Now, business?”
“We don’t have any business, Soolie,” Loritt said.
“I disagree. See, it’s come to my attention that you’ve poached one of my repo contracts.”
“Oh yes?” Loritt took a slow sip of an exquisite forty-eight Bino Eperon and let the sweet and sour flavors simmer on his tongue and olfactory organ for a rakim before continuing. “And which contract might that be?”
“The Space for Rant. Just docked this evening.”
“That was, if memory recalls, an open contract, Soolie. You have no more claim to it than anyone else. We got there first.”
“Yeah, but it’s how you got there first that bothers me.”
“Do tell.”
Soolie held out his malformed right arm and touched a crystal on the side of a custom bracelet he wore there. In the space between them, a small but very crisp hologram appeared over the table of the Rant’s All-Seal exit to Junktion’s docks. Jrill stepped out and flexed her scales at one of Soolie’s goons, provoking a flinch as predictable as it was satisfying. Then Hashin. Then …
First looked straight down the lens of the hidden camera. Soolie froze the image on her face. “My contracts aren
’t all you’ve been pilfering, it seems. The human girl works for me.”
“She tells a different story. My new employee says she never had a contractual agreement with you and worked entirely as an independent … let’s call her a consultant.”
“That’s rich. She washed up here half a cycle ago, flat broke, running small cons on the promenade. Picked my pocket, the little scab. But instead of throwing her out an airlock, I took her under my fin and taught her how to survive, and this is the thanks I get.”
“Your altruism is truly inspiring,” Loritt said emotionlessly.
“What did she say she ‘consulted’ with me for?”
“Stolen aircars to fence. Including my own, which I caught her in the act of trying to deliver to you.”
“The hell you did.”
“To your associates, then. The same ones who harassed my people at the docks as they tried to disembark the pleasure yacht we’d already taken legal possession of today under applicable Assembly statutes.”
“This is what I get for taking in strays. You only knew to jump it in high-space because you stole my human!” Soolie pounded his good fist on the table, drawing curious, disapproving looks from surrounding patrons.
“Control yourself, Soolie. You’re trying to be a gentleman these days, remember?”
Soolie took several long, angry breaths before answering. “Appearances can be deceiving. I keep excellent records. Give her up, or station security gets an anonymous tip on every car she’s boosted in the last quarter cycle.”
“If that happens, station security gets an anonymous tip about everyone she delivered those aircars to, and your muscle down at the docks all end up in a holding cell. That would be quite a blow to your newly renovated image.”
The two of them locked eyes for a long, labored moment.
“You know why they call me ‘the Fin’?” Soolie asked finally.
“Oh, here we go.”
“Because I was clutched with this undifferentiated arm.” He held up the paddle of his right forearm. “Somewhere along the line in the pouch, some hormonal signals got mixed up, and my flipper here never got the order to branch off into proper fingers. So my clutch-mates called me ‘the Fin.’”
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