by Ian Cannon
“That’s what I hear. We’ll stick to aqua running. What’s the payout on this one?”
Sympto pulled his palm admin device from an inside jacket pocket and thumbed it. It beeped and burbled showing the details of the contract. “Four-five-zero-zero,” he said.
“Forty five thousand,” Ben repeated.
Sympto said, “And my take at fifteen percent.”
“What are our expenses?”
“The price of water.”
“How much water?”
“One hundred thousand gallons by Imperium measures. For reimbursement, of course is.”
“Speaking of Imperium measures, we’re going to need new ident loads.”
“Why?” Sympto said irritated.
“Like you said, we’re all over the interplanetary comms. One little leak on our current ident loads and we’re sunk.”
Sympto groaned, “Okay, I have my team make another for you. Cost it will.”
“How much?”
“Fifteen.”
“Fifteen!” Ben blared.
“It is important tool,” Sympto argued. “Not easy for fabrication it requires. Must counterfeit the data. Takes talent. I have your man, but expensive is he. Must have current ident loads.”
Ben gave him a cross look. He was right, though. He settled back thinking about price. Forty-five minus Sympto’s percentage, minus cost of water, minus fuel, minus cost of new ident cards. He muttered, “Doesn’t leave much.”
“No threat. No danger. No pay. But you stay very busy, you will, my friend.”
“Heh—we stay alive.”
“Yes, but boring.”
“We’ll settle.” He leaned forward. “We like breathing, see?”
“So very married you are,” Sympto said and brought the hookah up to his thick, wet lips. Pinching the hose between his teeth and smiling big, he said, “So so married.”
Ben sat back, thinking. The job was small time. A low payer. But very easy. And after the heiress job, they didn’t want to jump into any potential action. It sounded perfect. “We’ll take it. What’s the delivery detail, more cloud miners?”
“No…” Sympto said blowing a mushroom cloud of smoke out into the room. “Lunar outpost this time, yes. Mortus moon. They solid miner facility they are. No water. Need water.”
“Mortus, huh? The place is a wasteland. There’s nothing there but methane.”
Sympto shook a finger at him, said, “Nickel ore too, yes.”
“Yeah, but who mines nickel?”
Sympto shrugged, still clearing his lungs of his last hookah hit. “Not know. Not ask. Not care.”
“Mmm—wise philosophy, Sympto. Okay, let’s look at that contract.”
Chapter Seven
Hub one-two-nine where REX had been auto-escorted for repairs was several hubs away through the main thoroughfare of Station Oficium. It was a long stroll, perhaps a mile through the gently curving station. Tawny and Ben opted against taking the whisper train, which ran along an exterior railway below the footpath. They figured the stroll would be nicer, and REX wouldn’t be flight ready for several more hours. Besides, the view through the universal window wall to the right was hauntingly breathtaking—a black on black backdrop of Speculus sitting in an ocean of stars. They were right. The stroll was better. It was unhurried, relaxing, just the two of them wandering lazily along amidst the occasional crowd of scurrying station goers.
They entered one-two-nine and took a lift down to the sub level where Fexx Pol’s Vessel Maintenance garage was. The viewport down here showed an enormous bay cluttered with meticulously placed craft, all hanging from station cranes with vacuum crews hustling parts back and forth, all of them grinding, cutting or attaching parts and pieces to the vessels with vacuum torches and laser rivet guns. Some even cranked away with good old wrench devices.
REX was easy to spot, his enormous mag-spires were in the downward position like legs stretching toward the black planet far below. A crew had already removed one of the starboard bulkhead plates showing his internal guts to the passers by. Progress was being made nicely, but anytime a ship experienced a breach necessitating exterior replacement parts, timelines tended to stretch. They were probably going to have to manufacture the right part in the machine shop. This could take a day. Maybe longer.
Fexx’s operation office was through a set of greasy slide doors and through the large waiting lobby. At the far end was a reception window where a bored looking engineer sat with his feet up on the counter picking his dirty nails with a tool, the intricate bald pattern on his head betrayed his specie—he was Pendulosi. Fexx preferred hiring Pendulosi. He was one himself. Not the best tempered people, but a hardworking lot. Ben approached getting the guy’s attention. He hardly reacted, just said, “What ship?”
Ben said, “The REX cargo vessel.”
The guy didn’t even look up. “It ain’t done.”
“We were hoping to catch Fexx. He around?”
The guy shrugged a shoulder, kept digging on his nails. “Somewhere.”
“Mind checking on him? We’re old friends.”
“Everybody’s a friend. Wait.” As if inconvenienced, he chomped a bite from a half-eaten sandwich and punched a comm button. “Fexx.”
“Yeah?”
“Got a guest. Two guests. One’s Raylon.”
Ben and Tawny switched eyes.
“Is that Tawny and Ben?”
The engineer scrunched his face, said, “I don’t know, Boss. They’re just two people.”
“Yeah, yeah, be right up. And get your feet off my flubbin’ counter, ya scum-wagger!”
The guy grumbled and dropped his big boots down to the floor. “So I guess he’ll be right…”
“Benjar Dash!” came a voice from the nearby door as it swished open. Fexx approached with a vacuum suit peeled down to his waist, its arms dragging the floor.
“What do you know, Fexx?” They shook hands the Pendulosi way, yanking each other’s shoulders nearly out of their sockets at the forearms. Ben found it menially painful.
Fexx turned to Tawny and opened his arms. “Well, well—the beast has a beauty.” They hugged, despite Fexx’s greased-up, sweaty appearance. The Pendulosi weren’t ones for politeness, nor the eccentricities of civility. To them, dirt, sweat and grime were badges of hard-earned honor to be shared daily. Tawny disagreed, yet her interspecies respect for protocol was rock solid, especially where useful friends were concerned. So, with a tight face, she hugged him back. She’d much rather be drinking with him. Pendulosi were great drinking buddies.
“It’s been a long time,” he said, “though I’m sure REX would disagree.”
“Yeah, we’ll hear all about it.”
“I knew I’d be seeing you two humanoid dogs before too long. Soon as I got a busted up RX-one-one-one in my shop I thought, yep—that’s Tawny and Ben’s handy work all right. What’d you two do to the old boy, bounce him off a few space rocks?”
Ben sighed, “Something like that. What’s the damage?”
“Couple of impact shields need replaced. Internal diagnostic seems fine. Bulkheads held up. Tough ship. Pretty standard fare around here.”
“What’s the real damage?” Ben asked.
Fexx laughed. “Twenty thousand yield ought to do it. Get you out of here and back into trouble in half a day.”
“Perfect,” Ben said. “Can we board?”
“Yeah, go ahead. Just stick to internals, leave externals alone. You know the drill.”
“Of course. Thanks, Fexx.”
Ben sat in REX’s lower bubble turret watching the workers buzz along his ship’s undercarriage. The starboard mag-spire control hub, a tiny space accessible only through REX’s engineering crawl holes, was open to space, but the crew was closing it up with a piece of new shielding. They were a well-oiled machine. His old buddy was in good hands.
He sighed, half bored, and looked down. The entire bay was open to space and there below his feet, as sinister as the stories
he’d always heard about Wi’ahr, was Speculus. The planet was impossible to see as it blended perfectly with the vacuum, just a see of black so crisp, so pure, it boggled the senses, redefining that blend of all colors until it became like staring into absolute nothingness. It took Ben’s mind, made it go toward those stories of Wi’ahr. He’d grown up with them, wives’ tales and childhood myths about an ancient people and an ancient god inhabiting those faraway dots of light, eternally shifting around that far faraway sun—those faceless, nameless people always staring back through the eternal distances with greedy, envious eyes. It made Ben the boy always wonder why they had to share such space with those people, those believers in Wi’ahr. Somewhere inside him, he always knew those tiny planets and that one distant sun were never so far away as he was led to believe. He knew that one day he would discover they were much closer, in fact, and on that day the war he’d always heard heroic and harrowing stories about would come to him. And he was right, for one day the peoples of Wi’ahr—praying to that wrong god and rumbling through neighboring space behind their war machine—came to his home. His childhood nightmares had come true. The Golothan moons Golot Prime and Golot Qued burned. He could see the twinkling in his night sky, watch the battles play out, see the lunar churners churn and hear the screaming in his ears. Those myths of his childhood were no longer myths.
The true myth was his childhood itself. Gone. Wasted.
From that day forward, he’d marched. To where, he did not know. But he marched. And marched. And then he was a man, scarred, beaten, always driven by the flog of combat, jarred to the bone until his pain numbed his mind, and his heart became like lunar glass—cold and icy. And then there was nothing left, nothing but him surrounded by a storm, standing amidst flame, always casting his eyes toward the next piece of horror. Just him. Alone. In a void. He could see it. He looked into himself until there was nothing left. Nothing but him. Nothing but emptiness.
“Benji!”
He jerked back, threw his arms over his head defensively. Tawny drew her arm away looking worried. His heart thudded inside his ears. He heaved momentarily like a Golothan marathoner slowly bringing himself back to calm, recollecting all his pieces. He shook his head, looked down at that black planet. It all made perfect sense—the superstitions, the stories about Speculus. They were all true.
The mirror planet.
“Are you okay?” Tawny asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “Just go up.”
He groaned lifting himself up out of the bubble turret and following her up the ladder and into the cockpit where he swung the hatch shut as if shutting away that strange planet beneath him. He moved down the passenger corridor and into the main hold with Tawny pacing behind eyeing him, worried.
She put one hand on his arm, one on his shoulder and leaned her cheek into him. They stood in the silence momentarily, not saying a word. She finally murmured, “Is it the war?”
He cleared his throat, said, “You know how it is.”
“Yeah, I do.”
He took a big, cleansing breath and moved to the table, sat down recuperating. The moment was over. Let it pass. Let if fade. He shook it away, took another breath, looked at her. “I was thinking about the Orbin offer; the Cabal planet pounder they’re building on Menuit-B.”
She sat across from him. “You’re not having second thoughts are you?”
“No, not at all,” he said reassuringly. “But it does bring up an interesting question, doesn’t it?”
She looked at him interested. “Like what?”
He picked absent-mindedly at a stain on the table surface. “Well, what if we were offered a contract to carry some payload, maybe perform a service job, anything, that could save, perhaps, thousands of lives.” He looked into her. “Would you do it?”
“Of course, I would.”
“Even if it breached our Space Rules?”
“Our rules…”
“Right.”
She got up, paced around. Had to think about it. She said, “That was the whole point of making those rules, to stay away from the war. We’re done with the war, Benji. It’s over for us.”
“I know. But what if it could be over for everybody, and it was our call?”
She squinted at him. “What do you mean?”
Ben leaned back in his chair arranging his thoughts. “What if we got a job that could end the war? Would you sign the contract?”
“Of course, I would.”
“What if it meant…” He looked up at her deeply, and said, “What if it meant defeating the Cabal—your people, ending Wi’ahr, everything—would you do it then?”
The slightest look of insult crossed her face. She paced back, then forth and stopped, said, “No.”
He nodded his head accepting her answer.
She continued, “We talked about this. We went over it and over it. That’s why we have our rules, remember? So we don’t end up benefiting one side over the other. It’s… what’d you call it?”
“Sacrosanct.”
“Yeah, that.”
“You wouldn’t break our rules; not even if it meant ending the war?”
“And kill the way of life I was brought up into? No.”
He frowned, said, “Huh.”
She grinned flatly, her insult now showing clearly. “Would you do it? I mean, if it was the other way around and it meant the Cabal taking control of the system, and it meant the end to the Imperium—your side, your belief system, your way of life, all gone—to end the war, would you do it?”
He had to think about it. Her scenario was a dark one. The Imperium would die. His history would be erased. His culture would be over. His society would be rearranged, redefined, even reworked entirely. Nothing in his past would matter, not tradition, not convention, nothing. Even his system of belief would wash away with the turning of the stars. His very god would die and Ae’ahm would be replaced by something lesser. He looked up at her with glistening eyes and said, “No.”
She made a resolute gesture. “See?”
“You’re right, Tawny. There’s the war, and then there’s us. We have to put it behind. Simple as that.”
She sat down, suddenly fatigued. “Why do we even talk about this stuff?”
“It’s philosophy, sweetheart.”
“I hate philosophy. It’s stupid. It just reminds me of how different we are.”
He chuckled at her compassionately. “I think it shows how alike we are. How deeply we can love something. How much we belong to something greater than ourselves. How far we’d go to preserve those things. We’re exactly the same thing, you and me.”
She looked at him. A question burned inside her she dare not ask. But she had to. “And what about our hatred?”
He blinked, leaned back, absorbed her question like a shot to the mouth. He grinned sadly and said, “The truth?”
“Yeah, the truth.”
He inhaled big. “Okay—I hate the Cabal. I hate it. I know you love it. I love the Imperium.” He reached across the table, put a hand on her face, felt her hot blood beneath her skin. “But I’d destroy the Imperium a thousand times over if it meant your life.”
She smiled uncontrollably and pressed her face into his palm. They swam inside each other’s gaze for a moment, then he relaxed, pulled his hand back, came back to reality. “The war’s too big, anyway. No single outlier like us would stop everything. And certainly no contract job.”
“Ha!” she blurted getting back to her feet. “Don’t tell that to General what’s-his-face. He seems to think the Menuit-B job is the answer to all the troubles of a hundred billion people.”
Everyone in the system, thirty livable planets, twelve Imperium, fifteen Cabal, the others neutral. A hundred billion lives.
Ben nodded in agreement. He said, “His hate is no different than his enemy’s. When I was in the Golotha Service in the Contingent—the Imperium—we were given a motto, forced to repeat it, forced to believe it.” His words were glum, low. He recited his 501st
motto, “Kill every last one of them, or die to the very last man.” He grinned with a sad version of pity and said, “I guess it didn’t stick. I mean, I fell in love with one of them.”
She smiled at him. “We had one, too. Well, it was unofficial.”
He looked at her interested. “What was it?”
“Screw ‘em.” They grinned at each other, fiery and hot. She said, “Guess mine stuck, eh?”
He leaned his head back and gave a tremendous laugh. “And that’s why I love you.”
The mood lifted. It was their superpower as a couple—turn a downtrodden moment into a reason to fight, live, feel joy again.
She sat down leaning toward him, smiling with that characteristic fire in her eyes. “Hey, you know what I want to do?”
“What?”
“Have some fun.”
He tilted his head, squinted at her. They were stuck here for the next few hours. Stuck at Station Oficium. Nothing to do. He grinned. “Guilder’s Mix?”
“Oh yeah,” she said.
He got to his feet and declared, “That’s a great idea, let’s go.” He headed for the airlock but stopped and turned. “Better bring your gun.”
Chapter Eight
They started with a game of Yakuna down in the gaming courtyard. It was a lover’s game developed off the shoulders of Molta-Danora. Guessing each other’s sexual appetites based on conceptual shapes hovering in the air, they flipped cards denoting their player’s challenges. Each round’s winner was offered a pressure pop of endorphins. Painless. Harmless. But thrilling. Unfortunately, Tawny and Ben knew each other’s secrets too well. Each round ended in a draw. No endorphin shots. The game was designed more for newcomers on the cusp of a one-night tussle. They’d be drunk on lunar liquor before getting buzzed up on the game’s offerings. Disappointing.
So they proceeded to the dance area where the music had segued into an upbeat alien mainstream pop-style rhapsody, loud and encumbering to the senses, the pounding beat syncopated to strobes and steam jets. It was crowded. Too crowded for Ben.
