Interplanetary Thrive

by Ginger Booth

  Lavelle waved that away. “I leave details to Clarke.” Clarke was Abel’s opposite number on the Gossamer, much as Lavelle was Sass’s equal. “It’s mostly what we discussed. But I have a new proposal. We also brought two cubic meters of refined metals from Hell’s Bells.”

  “Sounds heavy,” Abel acknowledged. Copeland would kill me, was the first thought that sprang to mind.

  “Very,” Lavelle confirmed. “It masses 20 tonnes per cubic meter. An assortment of refined rare earths and metals. The engineers on Hell’s Bells tell me it’s an assortment that engineers would die for. All excruciatingly difficult to mine on Denali.” He shrugged. “Everything is hard to mine on Denali. Asteroids have advantages. Well, think about it.”

  “Terms?” Abel asked. He’d already spent more money than he dared, really. His deal so far with Lavelle was half cash, half on consignment. To spread the risk for both parties, all goods to be considered equal. Half the cargo Abel was buying with cash, with all profits accruing to Thrive. The rest would cost Lavelle a thousand Mahina credits per kilogram for transport and brokerage, with the remaining proceeds their profit. But they agreed to split everything halfway. Even the sale of a single piece of machinery would be split between the two treatments.

  “Same as all,” Lavelle assured him airily.

  “At a thousand credits a kilo?” Abel reminded him.

  “What price a metal they cannot mine?” Lavelle asked, spreading his hands. “If you do not want them, we sell on Mahina. No difference to me.”

  Abel studied the enormous face before him for tells, and worried his lip. The pirate truly looked unconcerned whether Abel accepted the consignment or not. “Give us three hours?” he asked. “And a manifest of these metals. I’ll look into it.”

  “Hm,” Lavelle grunted. “You still have that time zone conversion app we gave you, Abel? It’s almost bedtime on Sagamore. And you cannot wait until tomorrow. Please speed it up.” He grimaced and clicked off the video.

  “Copeland will kill you,” Ben offered cheerfully.

  Sass grinned. “Forwarding the manifest to your tablet. Of course, Copeland is the one who knows what this stuff is worth. He’s not good at multi-tasking. Try not to interrupt him while he’s busy.”

  “Right,” Abel growled. Sighing, he set off for the cargo hold.

  6

  Copeland accepted the tablet Abel handed him, and continued giving directions to Clay and Kassidy, already suited up except for their helmets. He absently pocketed Abel’s tablet in his utility vest, and brought out his own to show his helpers a schematic of the frame.

  “Got your tablets? I want as closeup a picture as you can get at each of these joints, all around. And note which one, forward starboard, aft port container, same relative to the container. It’s hard to stick your gloves into the cracks, but take extra angles if you can. Stick to the access corridors between boxes. Do not exit the webbing.” The whole cargo array was now wrapped in webbing for safety. “You see anything that looks off, tell me right away. Otherwise, just record it. Clay, you start aft port. Kassidy, you stick with me front. Got it? Great.”

  Then they proceeded straight to the airlock.

  “Copeland?” Abel interrupted, tapping his shoulder. “My question?”

  “What question?” Abel’s pointing finger reminded him to return the man’s tablet.

  Abel pressed the tablet back on him. “Are these metals valuable?”

  Copeland glanced through the list and whistled. “Hell, yeah. Priceless on Mahina.”

  “So it makes good cargo for Denali?”

  Copeland’s mind remained fully engaged with the question of metal fatigue to his struts. Dodging rocks to escape the rings, Abel had spun the ship like a damned top, inflicting the worst kind of torque to his frame. “A few kilos couldn’t hurt.”

  “They’re offering two cubic meters –”

  That got through. “Are you out of your rego humping mind? You have any idea what this crap masses?” The engineer shoved the tablet back at Abel in disgust.

  “He said 20 tonnes per cubic meter.”

  “Abel –!” Words failed him. “No effing way. Get lost, I’m busy.”

  “OK, not a cubic meter,” Abel said doggedly, trailing him to the airlock. “How about ten tonnes?”

  “You’re pissing me off, Abel.”

  “One tonne? That wouldn’t take up much room.”

  Kassidy and Clay hung back, polite. Copeland yanked Kassidy into the airlock with him, and motioned Clay to pile in. “I said no.”

  “One hundred kilos,” Abel suggested.

  Copeland sealed his helmet and punched the door close button. His helpers hastily sealed their helmets as well, half afraid he’d cycle the air pressure without warning while he was preoccupied arguing with the first mate. Clay even had the gall to block the cycle button with a spread hand. Copeland knocked his hand away.

  “How many kilos?” Abel wheedled over the damage control channel.

  Stiff EVA gloves made it a real challenge to shoot someone the middle finger. But Copeland had oodles of practice on the first mate. He hit the air cycle button with his other hand. He forgot to check on his helpers first.

  He turned his back on Abel. Kassidy wore a fixed grin and exaggerated thumb’s up. Clay made a good start at mastering the art of flipping the bird in EVA gauntlets. And the tool box made it into the airlock – that was the main thing. Copeland hastily grabbed that before the outer door opened.

  “Any questions?” he asked his team.

  “A single kilo?” Abel asked.

  “Eat shit and die, Abel,” Copeland growled. “Captain? Get him off my channel!”

  “About to step into space,” Clay mused, “to perform a task we but dimly understand…”

  “I could use Copeland’s attention right about now,” Kassidy chimed in fervently.

  “Abel, leave him alone,” Sass decreed from the bridge. “Stay safe out there, team.”

  “But, captain –” Abel attempted.

  Sass cut him off. “Command channel, Abel.”

  Copeland breathed a sigh of relief, his sound-scape restored to just him and his team, and the task at hand. He wrinkled his nose at the whiff of vinegar – air hoses tended to breed mold and mildew. The engineer rinsed his lines religiously.

  He hit the outer door release. Now, where was he? “You OK working alone, Clay?”

  “Could we check one together first?” Clay requested. “If you could sort of describe what you’re looking for, show me how to get at it.”

  “Absolutely.” He clicked his headlamp on, caught the left grab-bar, pivoted outside with a flick of the wrist, clamped his tether onto a new steel cable the other two had never seen before, and cleared the doorway. “It’s just here, two meters up and hang a left.” He propped himself there, feet braced against a container, to watch as his helpers figured out how to ape his movements.

  Copeland shook his head in dismay. Always a tough call whether it was faster to ask for help or just do it himself. The starlet Kassidy, the monkey of the ship, flipped out gracefully, but a wrench worked free of her tool vest. Copeland automatically snatched it before it got away.

  She was working for her keep this time out, unable to pay rent. Since she sucked at every aspect of housekeeping, the plan had her working for Copeland mostly. He decided he could live with that. Her compact size and agility came in handy.

  The ex-white-collar cop, deliberate in all things, failed to notice that Copeland wasn’t in free fall. A 1/6th gravity field, exactly opposite the 1 g field inside, drew the containers toward the ship. The engineer probably should have mentioned that. Clay didn’t hit the wall too hard, though.

  Clay was a co-owner and data wizard, not an engineering hand.

  Both seemed a bit puzzled by the steel guylines, but some things were best left unexplained. They figured it out. Within a long 5 minutes, they were finally all pointed in the right direction and studying an anchor plate. This one was a perfec
t example of looking great, but it was also in one of the least stressed positions. Copeland tried, but couldn’t find any way to work his camera in to photograph its far side. He could slip in a scrap of mirror with tongs to examine it, though. Taking a picture of the mirror image, all while propping himself and in EVA gloves, just wouldn’t work. They’d have to call him over to look in person if anything seemed wonky.

  “OK. You guys won’t be able to reach the outer corners. They’re not the same as these anchors anyway. I need to shimmy through the web to check them. Kassidy, would you rather work alone or with Clay?”

  “I’d rather spot for you while you shimmy through the web. And keep Clay in the same quadrant with us.”

  “Point,” he allowed. “Let’s do it.”

  An hour later, they returned triumphant to the cargo hold. The whole frame looked sound, no tears or bends. With luck, the zig-zagging, ship-rolling, jerking ride to this point was the worst wear the virgin cargo structure would need to withstand for the entire trip.

  Well, aside from descending into Denali atmosphere, Copeland allowed.

  Clay rapped him on the helmet to break his chain of thought.

  The engineer sheepishly tugged the headpiece off and racked it. “Good job out there, team. Thank you. And we are a go!” He bopped still-gloved fists with them. “Take a break. Eat. Then we probably do cargo transfer. Right, Abel?”

  Abel sat on his favorite cargo hold bench beneath the air-cleaning scrubber trees. “Ready when you are. ASAP, actually. The Saggies want to go to bed.”

  “Oh, right. Time zones,” Copeland agreed. “Let’s make it a 20 minute break,” he dismissed his helpers.

  “Brought you a beer.” Abel held up his peace offering.

  Copeland gratefully claimed the bottle and sank beside him. He split his suit to the waist and shrugged out of the top half, to let the arms dangle. “Just the ticket, thanks.” He paused to set a timer and take a long swig of beer.

  Finally willing to engage, Copeland opened, “About the metals. You know that saying, worth its weight in gold? That crap is worth a thousand times more than gold. Which is good, cuz it’s heavier. I bet we could put all three of our kids through university on a kilo from that collection. It’s just the mass, man, you know? Right now we should have a 2X leeway on the strength of the frame, because that’s sound engineering practice. But that’s in theory. We just finished our first real test 5 minutes ago. Last test failed and we limped home.

  “But I don’t want to give up the profit any more than you do,” the engineer continued. His percentage on this voyage was minuscule compared to Abel’s. But he wanted every credit of it to repair his bankrupt nest egg. “Any way to get a commission off it on Mahina? Josiah would love to fence it.”

  “Broker,” Abel corrected. “We don’t fence things if we’re legit.”

  “Ah.” Copeland worked for the Schuyler mob boss Josiah since he was in middle school. Naturally he hadn’t caught the fine verbal distinction.

  “Good thought,” Abel continued. “But Josiah gets his cut anyway. He’s setting up Saggytown for them. And Lavelle knows how to grease his marks. Um, develop new customers. He even set up a comms satellite out here as a hostess gift.”

  Copeland snorted amusement. “Yeah, we’re probably out of our league against a pirate.” He pulled out his tablet. “Tell you what. I’m half down on the fuel hopper. We fill that, top off the interior water tanks. That’s 1.5 tonnes free, just back to initial loading plan. These metals are rego heavy, but so’s the other stuff we’re taking from them, so another half tonne there. I can give you another two.”

  “Damn, thank you!”

  Copeland held up a warning hand. “Only if it’s split into 4 equal 1-tonne crates to distribute evenly. But that much – it won’t matter.”

  “How about 8 1-tonne pieces?”

  “You’re like a little brat,” Copeland growled. “Your mother must have hated you. ‘One more cookie. Ten more minutes. Please, mommy, please.’ I’m talking physics, Abel. And you can damned well help me fill that fuel hopper.”

  Abel laughed and rose. “Deal. Friends?” He held out a fist to bop.

  “Con artist,” Copeland returned. He hauled himself up on the offered fist, but bopped it afterwards. In some circles, ‘con artist’ was almost a compliment. Abel dabbled in those circles as a Mahina businessman.

  Copeland used to swim with the sharks. “Yeah, buds. Let’s chill some more beer after. You coming out to load cargo?”

  “Wouldn’t miss it. I want to see what I bled for.”

  “See you in 10. Oh, hey, Mr. First Mate – staff the rest of that loading party for me, alright? I wanna eat. Can I have Benjy?”

  “I want him on the guns. I don’t trust Lavelle.”

  Copeland snorted amusement and headed up the stairs. Abel and Sass could wrangle with the pirates. Being a mere employee had its perks.

  Kassidy Yang hauled off an EVA glove. She almost laid it on the dining table, but remembered in time to stow it on her suit, its top half dangling from her equipment belt. This is so not a good look on me. The second glove snagged her middle fingernail on the way off. Drat. She’d just gotten a manicure yesterday, too, to primp before leaving the city. The nail was definitely torn. She’d have to clip it and use a fake.

  Or just clip it, she corrected herself. She didn’t need to imagine what Copeland would think of her long nails. He’d probably order her to cut them square and use them as scrapers.

  Clay’s eyes lit, amused, as he delivered her sandwich. “Tired?”

  She sighed. “I shouldn’t be. I mean, it’s not physically hard.”

  “You’re used to being the boss,” Clay opined. “Me, too.” He sighed.

  “Yeah. That. Copeland as boss.”

  “He doesn’t mean it when he yells,” Clay offered. “Ever notice that? He doesn’t hold anything against anybody. It just means he’s frustrated that he can’t explain it right. Not that he’s mad. Lot of guys like that in blue collar work. He likes you fine. In a perfect world, he’d never notice you were there. The right tool would just magically appear in his hands, the right answers be delivered the moment he asked the question, and he’d never notice you at all.”

  Kassidy chuckled. “I should try not to take that personally, huh?”

  Clay shrugged. “You’ve been in the business of catching everyone’s attention. The last thing John Copeland wants is to give you his attention.”

  “You got that right.” She bit into her sandwich and chewed thoughtfully. “I liked being the center of attention. Being a clown is fun.”

  Clay smiled with only his dimples, no longer lined to falsify aging. He had a wise smile that offered a faint glimpse into the century of wisdom behind the smooth youthful exterior. And the guy looked good enough to eat. Sass didn’t know how lucky she was, in Kassidy’s opinion.

  “Open or closed?” She crooked one dimple herself and cocked her head. “Your relationship with Sass this trip. I do need to know.”

  “Closed,” Clay suppressed her suggestion. Then he cocked his head, too. “Until it’s not.” He sighed. “We made some progress on vacation.”

  “Well. Just so you know, you have backup plans.”

  “A backup option,” Clay allowed. “But who knows, in the meantime, maybe you’ll fall deeply, passionately in love with…Eli?”

  “You made me snarf my water. Naughty Clay.”

  He laughed.

  “No, unless you free up,” Kassidy continued, “I’m thinking 5 months of celibacy. It’ll be good for me. New experience. Most people suffer dry spells. It’ll help me understand my audience better.”

  “Or you could borrow Ben’s porn video game. That wouldn’t work for me.”

  “No. Sass would kill you. And I’d borrow it from Cortez. If I asked Ben, he’d think I was propositioning him.”

  “Which you wouldn’t,” Clay returned, “because…why not Ben?”

  “Please. He’s just a boy.”


  “Hm.” Clay’s eyes were laughing at her again.

  Kassidy felt a blush rise on her cheeks. Not that she minded a blush. Her warm brown skin tone hailed from a different continent than Clay’s, but it looked even better blushing, she rather thought. “OK, I’m a touch closer in age to Ben than you.” She was 3 years older than Ben, 82 years younger than Clay.

  “A tad,” Clay agreed. “And it’s himself! That one’s for you.” He pushed a third sandwich plate over to Copeland’s place at the table as the engineer joined them.

  “Thanks. What are we talking about, that’s got Kassidy looking all guilty? Oh, hey, sorry if I yelled before. Foreman’s manners. I’m trying to get over it. Tough habit to break.”

  “I’m fine,” Kassidy denied.

  “She’d like you to stop yelling at her,” Clay differed.

  “Well, yeah.”

  “Sorry. How about a keyword?” Copeland suggested. “Call me a frog or something.”

  “Frog!”

  “So? What’s the dirt?” Copeland chomped into his sandwich. He really was oblivious to more delicate sensibilities. He seemed to invest his lifetime supply of grudges in his ex-wife. For him, the topic was over.

  “Kassidy’s romantic options on this voyage,” Clay shared.

  Copeland froze in mid-chew. He hastily washed that mouthful down with water. “Not me. Nothing personal.”

  Kassidy was relieved. “Good to know!” she said heartily, and clinked her water glass against his. “Mutual.”

  Not that there was anything wrong with Copeland. He was a fine physical specimen, for a settler, well-buffed and only a little bit stretched from lack of gravity. He took care of himself. She wouldn’t mind a one night stand with him. Provided she could walk away and never talk to him again. Kassidy demanded attention like a sponge, like her drug of choice. Copeland wasn’t offering.

  He noticed her hangnail. “You should cut them all, straight.” He demonstrated his own square and calloused fingers. “Stronger that way when you scrape at things. Easier than reaching for a scraper.”