Unconstant Love

by Timothy J Meyer

  Crappy boots and all, Moira squeezes her way safely to the end of the tunnel. Once there, she squats silently for many long moments, listening for any stray sound in the cargo bay below. The earlier delay meant they were now attempting this mission during the Franchise's more active hours; the chances of bumping into idle crew were much higher.

  The last way Moira wanted her solo stealth assignment to start was by leaping down from the hanging glacier and landing directly atop some dumbfounded crewman.

  Soon as she's sure no one's listening, Moira puts her new footwear to the test. Odisseus thoughtfully left this task to her, choosing not to leave a conspicuous hole in the bottom of the spaceberg any longer than absolutely necessary. As she suspected, it takes Moira six or more good kicks to shatter that last flimsy sheet of ice. Her jackboots, Moira knows, could easily have busted that thing in three kicks, maybe even two.

  Moira watches the shards drop to the deck. They shatter against the teltriton, approximately a dozen feet below. With the proper dangle and a Wheeling Tvorka upon impact, Moira feels confident she could blunt a fall from that height.

  Some awkward repositioning allows her to dangle her whole body down from the opening, hanging pretty much by her fingertips. The grip only allows Moira a few breaths before she drops down, her stomach soars into her throat and she hits the teltriton hard. On instinct, she tucks into the somersault she'd mentally rehearsed, rolling a few yards away from where she fell and landing in a tight crouch.

  From her crouch, Moira assesses her immediate surroundings. The temperature, as she predicted, is bitterly cold and her breath huffs out in tendrils. The floor is frosty teltriton, dotted with hunks of ice and marred with patches of rust. The walls and ceiling are invisible at present, either too far away or obscured by the cargo bay's many obstacles.

  Far as she can tell, she's made her landing undetected.

  The cargo bay of the GCF Franchise is dominated by the spoils of the Kzelos Cloud. Dozens of enormous spacebergs, fully the size of the Lover and larger, loom ten feet or so above Moira's head. Impressive metal clamps hold the asteroids firm and dangle them down, like buhox carcasses on hooks, from the cargo bay ceiling. As she wanders between the gallery of glaciers, Moira cannot shake the impression that she's essentially walking through a tremendous meat locker, where instead it's the ice that's kept on ice.

  The Attaché is easily retrieved from her uniform's pouch, stitched into the small of the jacket's back. The tiny hologram Moira summons gives her exact position aboard the Franchise, a miniscule green dot creeping across the vast expanse of the cruiser's cargo bay. A few taps manage to chart her path toward the desired exit and a swipe of her thumb adjusts the route to accommodate the little detour she's got planned.

  Moira doesn't encounter another living soul her entire time in the Franchise's bay. This first strikes her as odd, considering the size of both the ship and her crew. The freezing cargo hold, Moira then supposes, doesn’t have much call for foot traffic when stuffed to the gills with stored spacebergs and not much else.

  All the same, Moira does her best to maintain her cover – walking with purpose towards the exit, the Attaché clutched at her side. There are surveillance holos everywhere, Moira keeps reminding herself. She's seen the schematics.

  The garbage chute's only a few yards away from the door the Attaché wants to lead her through. Moira yanks open the chute's door, savors the wave of heat the incinerator vomits at her and strips off all her extra layers – the fleecy jacket and the insulated gloves. With a shiver and a sigh, she pitches them inside, knowing they'll draw too much attention in the Franchise's tepid crew corridors.

  So stripped, Moira doesn't want to linger in the freezing cargo bay any longer than she has to. Her composure and her alibi, however, both require a minute to gather themselves. She straightens and crisps her uniform – a denim workman's number – as best she can, even fretting a little over the wet spots she earned crawling through the icy tunnel.

  As Moira polishes her ident tag with her sleeve, she runs her name, her rank and her alibi over and over in her head, until she's convinced they're unimpeachable facets of who she is.

  Moira is now Jesbra Thoi. Moira is now a Gunnery Officer First Class aboard the GCF Franchise. Moira is now a recently promoted germaphobe from the fifth moon of Ujad.

  Soon as she's convinced of these facts, Moira takes a steadying breath and activates the door control. Soon as she's done this, of course, Moira comes face-to-face with another crewman.

  He's an Ionoi, dressed in the same pressed denim uniform jacket and chipper little hat that she wears. Mercifully for him, however, he's spared the workpants and the disgraceful leather boots, his serpentine tail pooling on the floor. In one scaly hand, he carries a holoboard, a distant cousin to Moira's Attaché, and from this, he looks up and directly at Moira as the door slides open.

  Moira represses her instant instinct to lash out and kill him. Once that's quashed, she represses the instinct to blurt out “Jesbra Thoi! Gunnery Officer First Class! Germaphobe!” Gaining her composure, luckily, takes Moira only a heartbeat. In that time, her golden rule resurfaces: observation before action.

  Her eyes instinctively land on the Ionoi's own ident card, where it hovers a few inches before the breast of his jacket. As a Petty Gunnery Officer, First Class, Moira actually outranks this Cargo Deck Foreman, this “Garriz, Dykar” and she can take solace in the fact that her motives are likely to go unquestioned by someone even marginally below her station.

  Instead of rank violence, Moira chooses a curt nod. Instead of stepping aside to allow the Ionoi to slither past, she stands firm and waits for Garriz to make way for her. Sure enough, his slitted eyes land on her own name and rank and he slithers obsequiously aside, allowing Moira to advance into the Franchise proper.

  Only when the cargo bay door sighs closed behind her and the Ionoi is gone can Moira exhale and safely examine her surroundings.

  The first thing sge notices is how little justice Two-Bit's holos do the interior of the GCF Franchise. Moira can hardly believe the cold, prosaic cargo bay and the lush, opulent corridors belong on the same planet, much less the same spaceship. The one is lifeless and utilitarian, the other is tasteful, decorative and obviously designed for comfort and elegance. For a moment, Moira's reminded fleetingly of the extravagant Inner Sector lifestyle she left behind so many years ago.

  It makes her want to puke.

  In place of unfeeling teltriton, the Franchise boasts Casqorin hardwood walls and polished marble floors. Every nook and cranny of the corridor she walks is stylishly furnished in attractive dark wood and upholstered with flawless blue leather. Moira passes an atrium with an honest-to-moons water feature, a miniature brook that babbles endlessly through an immaculately tended garden.

  Greenery is – for a spaceship – unnervingly common here. Expensive and provocative artwork adorns the walls. Muzak, offensive in its inoffensiveness, is piped softly through unseen speakers.

  No matter where she looks, Moira can't find a single shred of evidence to suggest she's aboard a spaceship, rather than some ritzy six-star hotel in the Inner Sectors.

  Nor is Moira exactly alone.

  Evidence of their miscalculated timing is everywhere. The ship's crew fill the corridors, loiter in open doorways and go about the day-to-day business of operating one of the galaxy's most profitable commercial cruisers. Moira does her best to join the steady trickle of blue-uniformed crew, all from a variety of species, ebbing and flowing around her. She strides with purpose, keeping the Attaché's specific route in her mind as best she can.

  Moira does her best to avoid large clusters of her “crewmates”, hoping to flit right past without drawing too much attention. To this end, she also keeps up her urgent pace, thinking that the less mystified and surreptitious she looks, the less she'll stand out as an intruder. Whenever she can, though, Moira will duck down a side passage or avoid any tangled intersection – no reason to put her unfamiliar face and
her less-than-stellar credentials before any more eyes than necessary.

  When push comes to shove, Moira Quicksilver would so much rather slink through the Franchise's security in her usual black leather and chokehold any wandering guards she encounters. Almost anything would be better than all these disguises and aliases and false identities. Moira feels very confident in her ability to infiltrate a secure compound and silently dispatch any resistance she encountered. She feels somewhat less-than-confident in her ability to smile and play the part of an ordinary spacer and not look conspicuous.

  This type of work she imagines Flask or Two-Bit would have excelled at. Unfortunately, neither of them were around for this stage and, of the three remaining pirates aboard The Unconstant Lover, Moira is, hands down, the least suspicious at a glance.

  Before long, Moira passes a viewport on her right side, concrete proof that she's aboard a spaceship. She cannot help but dawdle a second to admire the view, something she knows that Jesbra Thoi would probably have stopped doing months ago.

  When seen from space, the planet Gi doesn't seem worth all the trouble. A chalky white ball, it's almost featureless, save the occasional discoloration here or there that Moira assumes must be landscape or terrain. From where she stands, she can't see a speck of blue ocean anywhere on the planet's entire surface, which seems to confirm Two-Bit's intel about Gi's peculiar climate.

  It’s really the climatic field encircling the entire planet, though, bright yellow and rippling ever so softly, that convinces Moira this is the real deal.

  An essential tool in the arsenal of the galaxy’s agroworlds, the climatic field over Gi looks like a great teltriton spiderweb that encompasses the planet’s entire orbit. The strands of that web form one massive teltriton space station, housing projectors and docking bays and generators to power the field. In between those strands stretches the actual field, a membrane of shimmering energy that can trap or vent heat at whatever rate its controllers desire.

  That field can be modulated to simulate practically any conceivable climate – from subarctic to subtropical – on the planet below. It is the climatic field that allows the commercial crop industry to produce year round, on hundreds of planets throughout the Outer Ring.

  What makes Gi's case so unusual is actually invisible to Moira at this distance. Superficially, this climatic field appears no different to any other. Thanks to Two-Bit's notes and the crew's exhaustive briefings, Moira knows that this particular climatic field has been dialed all the way to eleven.

  In short, the Gitter Consortium is cooking the planet Gi to a crisp.

  Two-Bit's research claims that conditions on Gi's surface are so harsh and unforgiving, there's zero hope of sustaining an animal, much less a sentient, population. The planet is barren because the field saps all the moisture from the soil. The planet has no oceans because they've all long evaporated under the Consortium's brutal regime. The planet is a featureless dustbowl because, under these conditions, the list of flourishing species on Gi numbers in the single digits.

  First among those species, however, is the mysterious Gitter plant.

  Only here, throughout all the innumerable planets of the galaxy, has Gitter ever taken root and grown. Only under these unique conditions does the Consortium maintain a sustainable harvesting operation. For whatever reason – Two-Bit and his sources believe it to be a unique condition of the planet – this is the only world in all the known galaxy where the Gitter Consortium can grow their product.

  This is the truth behind all the secrecy. This is the need for the elaborate facade. While headquartered in the Gitter Hegemony's resplendent capital world of Gita, the secreted world of Gi is the true power behind all the Consortium's success and influence.

  Moira cannot begin to imagine all the pains and headaches that must have gone into concealing this whole operation from the wider galaxy. On a daily basis, records must be altered, warp coordinates must be scrambled, manifests must be forged for each of the dozens of ships in orbit around the planet at any given moment. This says nothing for the titanic amount of bribes the Consortium must pad their paychecks with, to crewmen, to middle-managers, to retail executives, to every single person along the shipping line with any reason to doubt the cargo's actual origin.

  Obviously, it went without saying that a conspiracy this massive couldn't be kept perfectly secret. The right questions asked to the right people could unearth the right venues where one could pay the right price to get the skinny about the scene behind the scenes. Thankfully for the crew of The Unconstant Lover, that's precisely the service Two-Bit Switch provided for them.

  Considering the extreme lengths the Consortium was willing to go to protect this secret, kicking in the door, guns blazing, was right out, as far as Two-Bit's heist was concerned.

  There was one chink in the operation's armor – smuggling their starship inside an asteroid and bumming a ride within the belly of a cruiser – that Two-Bit had managed to widen. It involved a molecular strip, millions of credits in bribes and ultimately six weeks of not murdering one another to accomplish. Even when performed to perfection, all this would give them is one chance – not even a particularly good chance – at making off with a Gitter plant in tow.

  That happy outcome, of course, is several phases of the caper away. Moira's lingered too long, she knows, gazing down at the planet the galaxy's most powerful corporation didn't want her or anyone to know anything about.

  Keeping a careful eye on her surroundings, Moira moves with purpose down the last little stretch of her route before the security terminal. She's struck with a sudden bolt of nerves as she nears her destination, afraid of passing right by the terminal without recognizing it. She gambles on double checking the Attaché's blueprint for a second, to ensure she's on the right track.

  Moira had nothing to fear; she's standing not ten feet from the terminal. She glances up, to confirm what the hologram's told her, and does indeed discover her destination.

  The security terminal is worked cunningly into the wall, a piece of machinery disguised beneath dark wood paneling. The only problem, far as Moira can tell, is the spice ranger that's currently using it.

  Moira recognizes her as an Vhurman by the segmented plates and twitching cilia. Moira recognizes her as a spice ranger by the gleaming metal harness she wears, strapped across her chitinous torso. Thankfully, the ranger's not paying Moira any attention, too busy putzing with something on the security terminal.

  Moira takes this opportunity to slink away, taking shelter in the nearest alcove she can. Once again, Moira's fighting her initial instincts, this time to flee at top speed back up the posh corridor. That's hardly how Jesbra Thoi would react, Moira reasons. To Jesbra Thoi, mild-mannered spacer with nothing interesting or suspicious about her whatsoever, this is just another friendly neighborhood spice ranger.

  With no Righty or Lefty, fight's not an option. Without attracting undue attention, flight's not a viable option either. All Moira can comfortably do is sit tight and rack her brain for some other contingency plan.

  The spice ranger, meanwhile, continues with her business uninterrupted. What that business is, Moira can't really tell from this angle. To judge by the sounds Moira hears, she has a strong suspicion that one of deadliest mercenaries in the galaxy is scrolling the feeds, watching stupid jborra holos.

  Were she facing some average ship security, some thug with a uniform and an electrobaton, Moira would feel no compunction about kicking the obstacle in the back of the knees and head until it stopped being an obstacle. In the case of a spice ranger, however, even a Moira Quicksilver armed with Righty and Lefty would think thrice before starting any shit.

  Legendary across Bad Space for their fighting prowess, their advanced firepower and their reputation as teltriton-hard motherbloomers, the Consortium's Spice Rangers Corp were the bogeyman's bogeyman. Nothing else could quite quail a corsair's heart like the mere mention of the Sunspots, the Comettails or the Shootingstars; fanciful names for deadly kill
ers.

  To preserve their unchallenged monopoly – and what's more, to guard their many corporate secrets – the Gitter Consortium spared no expense to create the greatest security operatives the galaxy over. Rangers were raised from childhood, they were equipped with bleeding edge weaponry and they were zealously devoted to the principles and ideals of the Gitter Hegemony.

  As an angsty preteen on Anglia, the young Moira Quicksilver's most frequent fantasies involved running away to join the Spice Ranger Corp. Soon as she actually did run away from home, she immediately attempted to enroll and promptly washed out of the entrance trials. Ever since, she'd looked upon the Ranger Corp with a confusing mixture of contempt and awe. The bitter bite of her rejection would be forever tempered by the squealing inner fangirl that Moira never managed to fully extinguish.

  It's the harness that captures the fascination and terror of the Outer Ring's criminal populace. Worn by each ranger, those exoskeletons were the number one deterrent against any act of piracy that might otherwise be committed against the Consortium's merchanters.

  When fully extended, the harness transformed a spice ranger, already an expertly-trained killer, into a living war machine. In addition to enhanced strength, enhanced speed and a partial ray shield, the spice rangers were perhaps most feared for their dreaded “heatblades”.

  All in all, this made the unexpected Vhurman someone the unarmed Moira Quicksilver wouldn't relish nor necessarily survive tangling with.

  Moira risks a glance around the corner. She confirms the insignia – an exploding star – stamped onto the back piece of the harness and sighs. Of course she's a Supernova, the ranger troop with an especially gruesome reputation of stomping out moonshining rings across the Quadrant. What’re the odds, Moira wonders bitterly, that, of the Franchise’s several thousand ordinary crewmen, she would have the good luck to encounter one of perhaps a hundred spice rangers aboard?