Mom was pleased, and she did not hide it well. Rick wondered if you could shout at people in their minds. He’d have to try it someday. He put his helmet on, opened the passenger door and stepped outside.
Ceresly?
The factory was a massive thing. A kilometre-long in every direction. A big grey block sitting on the desert floor, sandblasted by the dusty wind. There was activity in there. He could hear a soft hum in the wind and the clanking of machines was audible in the nearby factory. The activity never stopped as long as the supply ships kept coming. Rick had looked it up.
Factories posted requisition orders on the guild boards and miners bid for the contracts. The best bids won, and the miners fulfilled the orders. It was a good system. The guilds ensured prices didn’t go too low and the factories could choose from a large selection of ships and crews.
Rick had also discovered he didn’t need any kind of licence to start a mining crew. He could just get a ship and mining gear and go off in search of fortune. He wasn’t too keen on any guild getting a cut. But the forums all said the same thing. Those who don’t belong to guilds get robbed, or they’re pirates. Though some pirates had also formed guilds to help with their re-selling efforts. It was all a bit confusing and a little dangerous.
Space piracy fascinated Rick. He’d always thought it was a thing of the past or overly-exaggerated in movies. Earth was virtually crime-less, and he’d assumed the whole system was that way. It wasn’t. His new brain allowed him to go looking for answers to any question instantly. It was intoxifying.
Though space mining had brought wealth to many, it had not spread equally, and UBI didn’t stretch quite far enough in space. And, from what Rick had gleaned the old adage held true: “If there’s treasure, there’s pirates”.
It seemed a lot of pirates liked what they were doing. They loved posting videos of their adventures. Rick subscribed to a few of these pirates channels. They sprang traps from their secret asteroid bases and stole what they could and were gone again. They got drunk and partied. It seemed like a pretty good life. Apart from the dying.
Rick brought up some videos of pirates in action. Spaceships were not built for battle, not at first anyway. For a long time, pirates were limited to setting traps and boarding actions in space. It was usually messy. The current video featured a mining vessel escaping with spacewalking pirates still tethered to it. Maybe Rick wouldn’t make it as a pirate.
The line between pirate and miners had blurred somewhat over the years, miners could be pirates. Pirates could be miners. and everyone sold their hauls to the same factories. Just like the one in front of Rick. The gall on them.
Rick turned back to the van. He’d thought the others would have followed him out, but they hadn’t. He went back to the van. When he opened the door, he found them discussing strategies for getting aboard a mining ship.
“We simply hail the next ship that comes in after it drops its cargo.”
“No before! They might leave too quickly for us to hail them.”
“No after! If we contact the ship before we might spook them. Let them get paid first. They’ll be in a good mood.”
“What if they don’t take us?” It was the first time Rick had seen Moon participate in these strategic conversations. Then again he’d been out for two days.
“What if it’s an AI pilot that doesn’t care about money?” Mama was getting involved too. Rick didn’t know much about Moon’s AI. Maybe he should try. Brownie points.
“They’ll take us. They’ll take the money.” Rick’s confidence spread to the others, and the conversation ended just in time for their radar to pick up a ship.
“The mining ship has settled in orbit above. I’m tracking their container shuttle.” Rick edged closer to the pilot dash and tried to understand the instruments, but he wasn’t there yet. “They’ve landed on top of the factory. It should take them no more than twenty minutes to swap out their containers.”
“We’ll have a few instants to make contact while the ship verifies the payment.”
Rick stared at the ship, it hovered on top of the factory, above what he expected was an opening. The containers hung from magnetic clamps on a rotating cylinder, like an elongated Ferris wheel. Each rotation brought an arm above the opening, which then lowered the container into the factory’s unseen mechanism. After the first complete rotation the ship’s cylinder went again, and this time mechanical arms pushed containers up from the factory towards the ship. The moment Rick saw the last of the containers had been swapped he turned to Brock. He’d already signalled the paramedic in the driver’s seat to hail the shuttle.
“Cargo shuttle C-137 do you read me?” After a few moments, the response came.
“Yeah, I read you. What d'you want?” A grumpy voice. Not good. A bit of muttering in the back of the van.
“We have passengers looking for passage to Ceres.”
“And…What do I care?” The answer came quicker this time.
“They’ll pay ten thousand credits for passage. Five people, their AIs and a dog.” That was only twice as much as it would cost for them to take the Solus Express. Rick was assured this was not an amount that would arouse suspicion. The answer came after a few minutes. The wait was painful. Rick sat quietly while voices talked over each other about a plan b. They’ll take the money. People always take the money.
“Alright, we’ll take them. I’ll bring the shuttle about a bit north of our position. The passengers can board there. Be quick.”
The line went quiet and the shuttle hovered away from the factory. As it moved the large magnetic arm gripping the containers retracted. The van started and followed the ship. Rick thought the shuttle looked like a cartoon fish skeleton. It was a bare bones design, its sole purpose was taking cargo containers to and from the mining and transport vessels that waited in orbit.
The cargo ship had landed a few hundred metres away from the factory. Their van parked right next to the shuttle’s front. Not too far from an opening where no one was waiting for them. The pilot’s voice boomed out on the ship’s PA and told everyone to board. They did so diligently after a brief farewell with the paramedics whose names Rick had never learnt. Maybe he should work on that. He quickly shook the thought. Amy probably knows.
The inside of the shuttle was filthy. They boarded into a passenger area behind the cockpit. The place looked like it had never seen a cleaning product. It reminded Rick of his room as a teenager. Half-eaten food, greasy packaging, overflowing ashtrays, sticky surfaces; this place had all the trademarks of a college frat house. Moon’s nose wrinkled at the smell. Her perfect features twisted by her disgust at the sights and smells before her. The dog went crazy sniffing left, right and centre before getting some licking going. Brock went towards the cockpit door, but it was locked. He gave it a knock.
“Hey, thanks for picking us up. We appreciate it.” No response. Brock looked back at the others and shrugged. “We’re all aboard.”
“Can all passengers take their seats, departure is imminent.”
Brock took the seat nearest to the cockpit door, and with that, the ship began to move. The trip to the main craft didn’t take long, soon it was in sight. Rick could tell the ship was a convert. No builder in their right mind would ever roll out such an abomination. He loved it. Old and beaten up, a testament to some crazy times.
At first glance, the ship looked like someone had welded some giant haul trucks and cranes onto a rescue and salvage boat. As the shuttle circled around Rick got a better look at the rear. Someone had stuck the ass of a spacecraft onto the boat. How everything held together was hard to tell from a distance. Probably space welding. It seemed like the giant rescue ship with its bloated bow was used as the base. The centre of the vessel had been transformed into a parking lot for vehicles. The whole area was surrounded by cranes and diggers that probably worked on emptying the bounty into containers.
The more Rick looked at the craft, the more he liked it. His reveries stopped when t
he shuttle began its docking procedure, and he lost sight of the ship. There were a few clanking and scraping sounds, Rick’s head bounced left and right, then they stopped. The main ship’s hatch connected to the shuttle’s door and pressurised air was released from somewhere. The door slid open revealing a silhouetted group. To his left, Rick heard a long hiss as the cockpit door struggled to open. The pilot hurried over to who was probably his captain, hushed words were exchanged. Rick looked at his helmet on his knees and decided it might be best if he was incognito.
“Oh, by the way, Rick, I forgot to tell you.” Brock was smiling, he paused.
“What?”
“You don’t have to keep taking your helmet and gloves off. Pops gave you a nanomachine upgrade. If you just think “retract” some parts of your armour can retract.”
“What the fuck? Why wouldn’t you tell me right away?”
“We were going to! We were interrupted… Remember?” Rick felt shitty now. He put his helmet on and thought “retract”, the helmet disappeared almost like it was being dissolved. The nanomachine components vanished into the section that covered the back of his neck. The bit that should never be uncovered. He tried with his hands but decided to try the crotch some other time.
Rick and the others were now up and waiting for their hosts to finish. It seemed the captain was displeased.
“You told me you’d gotten us an extra 10k on this job. And I thought that’s great, well done. But what you didn’t tell me is that you’d bring a whole other crew aboard.”
“They’re just passengers boss.”
“Are they now?” The captain eyed them menacingly.
“They said they needed passage captain. I thought we could use the cash for them weapon upgrades you were talking about gettin’.”
“Why don’t you tell them we’re defenceless and the combination to the safe while you’re at it?”
“Sorry Boss.”
“You’d better be! Now fuck off and prep the coordinates for Ceres!” The captain turned to Brock first. “Big fellow aren’t you” Brock nodded. “You aren’t gonna start any trouble are you now?” Before Brock could answer, the captain had walked away. He passed Gary and Steve without a second thought and stopped an uncomfortably long time in front of Moon before getting up to Rick. “I know you.” Rick swallowed. “Only one person wears a full body armour. Seen it on the news. You’re The Last Human.”
It was Gary’s quick thinking got them out of that pickle. He signalled Steve who got into position. “A fan that’s amazing! So you know we’re travelling Solus on a shoestring! And we thought we’d try hitchhiking to Ceres!” The captain seemed unmoved.
“Am I on TV?”
“Yes! Anything you want to say to the fans?”
“Stop that. I don’t want to be on TV.” With that, the captain turned his back on everyone and walked away, as he passed his crew he stopped. “Show them to the mess.”
◆◆◆
The mess… Was a mess. The whole ship was a junkyard, scraps of food were left to rodents, scraps of junk were left to no one in particular. Probably some of that stuff they thought would be useful one day but ends up never serving any purpose, so it just sits there in the corner collecting dust until it becomes someone else's problem.
Rick had been considering eating until he’d actually walked in and seen the place. They must have had an infinite number of trays and plates because it seemed they never cleaned the used ones. Turned out they were edible and no one was eating them.
Moon had located a lounge area far from the food scraps and had gone to crash on one of the couches. The crew members that accompanied them stayed, some got food, others just drink. They sat down at one of the tables and just talked like Rick and the others weren’t there. He saw they were drinking beer and that’s all it took to get him over.
“Could I get one of those?” He pointed at the beer. They stopped their conversation, and several of them pointed towards the brightly-lit kitchen area. Rick walked over to what was the most disgusting Mr Food machine he’d ever seen, sitting in the most disgusting kitchen. It looked like a thousand meals had been cooked in there and not a single time had it been cleaned.
Rick couldn’t see a robot or AI in sight. He hadn’t noticed at first, but now that he looked he saw that none of the crewmembers had Smartcubes either. Why would anyone go through life without an AI? Rick froze. Pirates.
He was standing in front of Mr Drink now. He mechanically started punching in the selection sequence for beer and remembered he had a neural link now. The selection was instantaneous. The beer started pouring, and Rick seemed satisfied this machine was serving something that was beer. He took one big gulp from the glass, looked at the beer and took a few more small sips and smacked his lips. He put the glass back under the nozzle and refilled it. He shouted across the room to ask if anybody wanted a beer. Everyone said no apart from Gary. Rick pretended he didn’t hear anything and went to sit close to Moondog. The dog put its head on his lap, and he scratched it behind the ears.
Rick didn’t know what kind of fusion drive was on this ship, but Ceres was currently about as far as it could get from Mars, they’d be passing by Earth. He didn’t like that. He wanted to get out of the inner solar system. But without a ship of their own, they’d need to try and get back onto the Solus Express on Ceres. Rick had been looking Ceres up. Seemed like his kind of place. A thousand kilometres of absolute chaos where the power of the guilds rivalled the Council’s.
The dwarf planet had evolved very fast, and though small had become immensely powerful by enabling trade and facilitating mining. Until the expansion to Ceres water came from Earth, but the colonisation and subsequent exploration of Ceres revealed its vast watery reserves. The water guilds had become the most influential mining guilds and effectively ran Ceres. Everyone traded with them for precious water.
Rick was deep in his neural link flying between the dwarf planet's buildings. It was entirely covered by a sprawling city that made it look like a sort of spikey death star. The place was busy. The planetoid was at capacity and had been for some time. Ceresians had built as high as they could before turning to orbital expansion.
Rick's virtual adventure continued among the dozen stations affiliated with Ceres orbiting nearby. He also flew by some of the hundred or so farming satellites orbiting the dwarf planet. The space around Ceres was busier than a beehive; apparently the only place in Solus there was actual space congestion.
If they were going to find a way past the Asteroid Belt, Ceres was the best place to look. The natural chaos of the area would make them hard to follow. Rick looked up from his musings, Moon had dozed off. Her head had come to rest on his shoulder. She’d pushed the dog a bit. Progress. Seemed like almost dying had made him more attractive. Brock was linked, he could tell from the blank stare. Gary and Steve were working on a holoputer. Rick was trying to calculate how long it would take to get to Ceres, but was struggling a little.
“Amy?”
“Yes, Rick, what’s up?”
“How long to Ceres?”
“I don’t know this ship’s specifications, nor can I find out without the captain’s permission. But based on existing fusion drive technology of the last twenty years and the current orbits of Mars and Ceres. I would estimate anywhere between twenty to eighty hours depending on the fusion drive capability.” Somehow Rick doubted this boat was equipped with the newest anything. This would be a long ride. He remembered reading somewhere that if an adventurer should find himself in a lull, he should take that opportunity to sleep. A nap could work.
◆◆◆
Rick awoke to Amy saying “Rick” repeatedly. He couldn’t tell if it was a dream, a neural link or speech. He tried the block function, and the Ricks stopped, instantly answering all of his questions. Without opening his eyes, he unblocked Amy and started repeating Amy continuously at her.
“Ok, I get it! It’s annoying.”
“What’s up? Are we there?”
&
nbsp; “No, but while I was in sleep mode, my sensors notified me that the ship was decelerating.”
“And?”
“We shouldn’t be decelerating for another day or two if Ceres is the destination. Rick, we’re near Terra.” Rick turned to Brock and saw that he was already there and had heard what he needed to. Rick gave him “the what do we do” look.
“If they’re slowing down near Terra that means the captain means to sell us back to the Agency. Mr T, any bounties on Rick?”
The AI muttered something about pitying the fool and announced that there were in fact bounties on all of their heads. “These bounties weren’t posted by those Council or Agency fools. This is on the mercenary boards.”
“What does this mean Brock?”
“It means Dave fucked up and Dick probably doesn’t know what the hell is going on.”
“Is that good?”
“Yes, it could be.”
“What about our current predicament. I mean it does seem like we’re getting turned in.”
“Not if we take over the ship.” Brock smiled, Rick felt a jolt of excitement. He went over to Moon to wake her up gently. That failed when Brock called out to Gary, and she jumped up towards him, head-butting him square in the face.
After copious amounts of rubbing and swearing Moon and Rick were ready. They joined Brock standing by the closed door. The lock and control panel were unresponsive, something about an incorrect password entered too many times. Brock was about to rip the panel off the wall. Rick could sense the rage-monster building up in his friend.
“What’s that sound?” They all turned to Moon with raised eyebrows. But the moment they quieted down they too heard the sound. Like a soft hissing. Brock was the first to understand and started banging on the door. Not a “please let me out” kind of banging more of an “I’m going to punch this door off its hinges” kind of banging. It didn’t work though. Moon, the AIs, the dog, they all went down. The darkness took Rick before he hit the ground.
Space Shenanigans Page 4
