by Jody Wallace
Chapter 5
Lincoln waited until Su, Mighty, Hoff, and Briar had gathered in Su’s quarters to share the bad news. After the ship rat panic, the strip team foreman, Unker, had escorted them to their rented roundabout flyer and warned Briar she was lucky she’d only been fired. Said her personal possessions would be sent to her but not to set foot on Tank Union property again. Then he’d told Lincoln that Tank Union was banning him from doing business with them and to haul his ass back to Oka Conglomerate if he knew what was good for him.
Lincoln, unfortunately, had never known what was good for him, so here he was, the next day, about to explain to his cohorts that their plan had failed even worse than they realized.
“How long until you get the Catamaran fixed?” Su asked. She’d switched off the console and regarded the occupants of the room with her elbows on her knees. “Shouldn’t you be up there doing repairs?”
“Speaking of which, Su-Su, I need to refuel your roundabout. Been making a lot of trips back and forth.” Hoff settled into the extra chair, and Briar and Mighty joined Lincoln on the bed. “Or you could let my people help repair the Tomen that Scrapper bought.”
In the three months Lincoln had seen them interact, he had yet to see Su pleased to speak to her uncle, while the man’s love for his niece oozed out of him like heat from a fire. “No thanks. I can buy my own fuel.”
“Family discount.” Hoff waved a hand. “It’s for the cats, right? Anything for the cats.”
They might not be saying that here in a minute. Once the door was shut for privacy, Lincoln withdrew the object Mighty had hidden inside the cat carrier yesterday from his coveralls pocket. “Here’s the piece Mighty stole from the zheng. It’s—”
“You are one clever cat, Mighty Mighty,” Hoff interrupted.
“I am indeed,” Mighty agreed. He gave himself a quick, satisfied groom of the paw. “I wasn’t sure if I could skip while holding a foreign object in my mouth…those tests haven’t been going very well…and yet I did. Boson Higgs does not know why, since he cannot do it, but our head psychologist Cuddlemuffin argues that urgency and need can boost performance. Like adrenaline for my abilities.”
“You sure some of you don’t want to come work for me? A spot just opened up as a Tank Union infiltrator.” He laughed at his own joke while Briar, between Lincoln and Mighty on the bed, buried her face in her hands. Hoff didn’t seem angry with her, though she’d fretted to Lincoln on the ride back to Su’s factory yesterday. She’d had to stay at Su’s barracks overnight because she’d lost her spot in the Tank Union apartments along with her job.
Mighty, sprawled on Su’s pillow, began grooming his furry black stomach and didn’t respond to Hoff’s second comment. While some of the cats did spend time on Su’s property and in Hoff’s visitor’s center, they hadn’t worked out a system where the cats occupied themselves with anything other than cat business. Lincoln had no idea if the cats were costing Su or Hoff money—other than lost employee hours for anyone sent to aid them and fuel for the ship. Since everyone seemed to adore the cats, nobody complained.
But perhaps there was a good reason why the cats weren’t given posts. Lincoln cleared his throat. “The piece Mighty stole is not the piece we need. It’s a inductor card and it’s in decent shape, but the one in the Catamaran has already been replaced.” He set carefully on the corner of Su’s desk.
“Shit,” Su cursed.
Briar uttered a noise that was a cross between a groan and a whimper, muffled by her hands. “Nooooooo.”
Mighty looked up from his bath. “Nonsense. Do you know how hard I had to work to slide that out of the slot? With my teeth? Of course it’s the right piece. And I skipped with it. I was triumphant.”
Lincoln hated to contradict the cat, but the truth was the truth. He unrolled the flexible, blueprint-friendly B-tab to show everyone the schematics of the energy coil in the Catamaran. He pointed at the inductor card, which was close to, but not the same as, the much larger Mozim power converter. “You got that one there, right?”
Mighty stared at the screen for a long moment before he curled his body into a loaf shape, paws tucked under his chest. “Obviously we’ll need to go back and fetch the right piece.”
“We can’t do that. I lost my job. My Tank Union chip has been removed and our access is gone.” Briar’s face was paler than usual. Well, paler than it had been yesterday when he’d broken a man’s arm for hurting her and they’d narrowly escaped being mauled by ship rats. “Now you’re saying we didn’t even get the piece we need?”
“I’m afraid so.” Lincoln’s sympathy for her hunkered like a stone in his chest. She’d tried so hard yesterday, but Steven Wat and his associates hadn’t cooperated. According to Mighty, they’d been there to steal the Mozim converter, too, but there was no way of knowing if they’d done it. Lincoln hadn’t managed to spot the piece before the shit had hit the fan.
“This is all my fault,” Briar said. “I couldn’t give you enough time. I couldn’t figure out how to get rid of Steven. Then I got myself fired. I’m useless.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Lincoln told Briar. He nudged her with his knee, just for a second. She was touchy-feely, so she probably appreciated a little human contact when she was upset. “Much.”
She shouldn’t have kicked Steven when he was down. Lincoln shouldn’t have broken his arm, either. He just hated a bully. The other guy’s question about whether Lincoln’s actions made him a bully, too, teased the edge of his conscience, but not after Steven Wat’s order to kill them. Unker had possibly saved their lives.
Long story short, if Briar wasn’t angry at Lincoln for what he’d done, he could hardly be angry at her.
“You aren’t useless.” Hoff propped an elbow on the armrest of the chair and regarding Briar sympathetically. “Do you know how much money you saved me in the past ten years?”
“Money is not the be all and end all,” Su said.
“The important thing is the health of my human and cat friends in those malfunctioning cryopods,” Mighty stated. “We must have that piece. Or is there a way to repair the old piece?”
“I can’t take it out and mess with it until I have a new one to put in,” Lincoln said regretfully. “Don’t know what that would do to the sleepers.”
“Are there other registered zheng ships anywhere in the galaxy? Let us fly to them and steal their piece,” Mighty said next.
“It wouldn’t be that easy.” Lincoln thought about petting the cat, but he’d have to reach over Briar to do it. Mighty seemed tense and unhappy, with good reason. “You still need to get a human on board to extract the piece—and then escape.”
“We skipped Wil Tango from ship to ship to save his life,” Mighty argued. “We could skip our human assistant onto the ship, take the piece, and skip back out. Simple as a snack.”
“You yourself just said those experiments aren’t going so great,” Su reminded the cat. When Wil Tango had been taken captive by a casino boss who had figured out Pumpkin was sentient, the other cats had banded together to transport Wil to safety before the ship had exploded. Their subsequent trials in mass-skipping—though they had been asked very firmly not to transport “volunteer” humans until it was proven safe—were not producing fantastic results. “The card was tiny. The converter is a lot bigger. And a human with a converter is bigger still.”
“Then how are we going to save my people?” Mighty demanded, rising to his feet. Briar reached out a hand, and he allowed her to stroke him from head to tail, but his pupils remained dilated and worried. “Must I call the other cats to convene?”
“No, no,” Su said hastily. A throng of sentient cats, some of whom had no compunction about molding a human’s motivations to their liking, could be hard to take. Lincoln suspected a lot of the reason he was the Catamaran’s mechanic was because the cats couldn’t shove him, and Su didn’t want someone up there getting shoved around. And also, he liked the little buggers. “We’ll come up with
something. Just give us time to think, Mighty. In our own way, if you please. Forcing us to feel your urgency won’t create miracles.”
“What does she mean?” Briar whispered, tickling Mighty Mighty under the chin.
“That thing where the cats put ideas in your head,” Lincoln told her. Was Mighty doing it right now? To any of them? It wasn’t always easy to tell. “You might find yourself doing something they want you to do that you didn’t really choose.”
“I haven’t pushed her much. Briar is obliging, unlike some humans I could mention,” Mighty explained before Su gave him a dirty look and he subsided huffily.
Lincoln took the opportunity to study the woman seated beside him on the bed. Briar had run her hands all over her head and face, and her hair was no longer a tame, slick tail gathered at the back of her neck. The brownish strands hung around her face in a strange mixture of straight pieces and twists that Lincoln couldn’t quite figure out. Well, she hadn’t had access to her own cosmetics and stuff last night, whatever people with hair needed to look a certain way. Lincoln was not well versed in hair care. She’d also exchanged her pale blue outfit for a set of ill-fitting greys, the plain recycled shirts and trousers that people on Trash Planet wore under their protective coveralls.
Briar suddenly quit petting Mighty and straightened, a frown creasing her brow. “What I want to know is why Steven Wat was trying to steal the exact piece we need?” Nobody had asked, but it was a good question. This must have been eating at her. “Why this ship, and why now? And why did the board believe him instead of me?”
“Well, you kicked him,” Lincoln pointed out. “And he’s on the board.”
“Please. You met him. Every member of the staff would jump at the chance to kick him anywhere they could,” Briar grumbled. “Probably even Axel. That’s our AI robot. Steven was in the Sikong poking around but the board didn’t know, and he didn’t get in trouble for it.”
“Maybe he is in trouble,” Lincoln said, resting his elbows on his knees. “You got fired, so you wouldn’t know.”
“There are people I can ask.” She tilted her head. “Or can I? I don’t like how quick Unker was to believe everything Steven said. I thought for sure he’d side with me. I worked with him a lot more than Steven did.”
“Didn’t you bribe people like I told you to?” Hoff said. “This Unker fellow. If you wanted him on your side, I supplied you with enough DICs for that.”
“I didn’t think I needed to,” Briar argued. “I was very good at my job. That should have been enough.”
“Wat was shit at his job and he got on the board instead of you. Obviously being good wasn’t enough. Shoulda offered bribes,” Hoff maintained.
“I absolutely wasn’t going to bribe Steven Wat,” Briar snapped back. “That’s probably how that blobfish got the job.”
“All you had to do was bribe more,” Hoff said.
Briar growled. Before she could respond, Su broke in. “This is beginning to sound more like a grudge against this Steven person than useful information. I’m happy to believe the worst of anybody in Tank Union, but we have to be practical.”
Briar regarded Su steadily. “I did not do anything illegal like bribe people or allow shoddy performance while I was employed there. Inasmuch as I could influence things, I did.”
Hoff snorted.
“Too late for me,” Su said, and accidentally on purpose clonked her metallic prosthetic against the desk before sticking both legs out in front of her in an insolent sprawl.
Briar and Hoff both winced. Su never missed an opportunity to remind her uncle that his choices had nearly caused her death, though whenever her uncle wasn’t there, she didn’t seem to give a shit about it.
While Su might have derailed the discussion, Lincoln did see Briar’s original point about Steven Wat. Briar was the union’s gen ship specialist. The only reason Lincoln knew about zhengs was because he’d worked on one in the Oka Conglomerate. They were hardly common knowledge. If Tank Union had never gotten a zheng before, how had Wat known to steal one of the most valuable pieces? Was it those men? They hadn’t seemed competent enough to be pirates or repulsive enough to be slavers.
“What happens now, with the Sikong?” he asked. Any plans would hinge on that.
“If the rest of the strip goes as scheduled,” Briar said, “Unker will take apart that cryopod room by end of today and send the info to—whoever gets my job. Hell, probably Steven. But he’s lazy, and he’ll milk that broken arm, so I’d guess Prella. The rest of the manifest will be uploaded to the scraproll to find buyers. We were already garnering interest, and the profit they’re going to make, all thanks to me, from the gloss in the cryopod bay is…”
She coughed herself into silence, and her cheeks turned pink.
“So you’re saying we can check the scraproll and see if the Mozim power converter is listed?” Lincoln translated.
Her blue eyes gleamed at him and she patted his arm in appreciation. Normally he didn’t like people getting in his space, but his walls seemed to have been busted down by all the damn cats. How could you say no to a cat who wanted pets? He figured that was why Briar’s mannerisms were already kind of pleasing to him, as long as she wasn’t stroking next to his crotch because she got distracted and forgot he wasn’t a feline. “That is exactly what I’m saying.”
“I’ll start the search on the scraproll,” Su said, reactivating her cybbie console. “Why don’t three of you go eat and one of you go home?”
“I resent that you keep sending me away.” Mighty’s ears flattened against his head. “Are you planning on telling secrets? Is there something I should know?”
Su looked over her shoulder at the black cat. “Cat, do you want to be bored while I work on the cybbie, or do you want to get food with your buddy Lincoln? Do you think nobody has noticed how you ride around on his shoulder all the time?”
“Cats like tall places,” Mighty said with a sneeze.
Lincoln hadn’t realized everyone had noticed his preference for the cat. He’d assumed it was his preference, not Mighty’s, but with a cat, your preference didn’t matter, so it made sense. Briar ruffled Mighty between the ears, and he sneezed.
“I’m a good bit taller than Lincoln,” Hoff offered, holding out his arm. “That Queen Bea of yours likes to cuddle up with my beard. How’re her kittens doing?”
“They are far too spoiled for my taste,” Mighty said from Briar’s lap. He kneaded up and down, as if softening her thighs, and she gave a little twitch. Lincoln had learned quickly that greys weren’t as claw-proof as coveralls. “Especially the white ones.”
“They have your smarts yet?”
Mighty stuck his tail in Briar’s face and yawned. “Of course they do. They are cats.”
“So is that yours-smart or just…cat-smart?” Hoff asked with a grin large enough to be seen through all his facial hair.
It had been a subject of some debate, whether Queen Bea’s evolved intelligence would transfer to the kittens she’d conceived some months past. They were the first ones born since the awakening. Javier had been as involved in the gestation and birth as Queen Bea would allow. While she had not deigned to share the identity of the father, she never skipped away from the ship. It was a hundred percent likely her partner had been another evolved cat.
“I am not the sperm donor,” Mighty said with a tail flick Lincoln didn’t buy for a minute. The cats, he had found, were not particularly honest if it didn’t suit them. “If you placed your money in that betting pool, you will be losing it.”
“Damn,” Hoff said, rising and heading for the door.
“Hoff, I mean it, you need to go home to your own factory,” Su called after him.
Hoff halted in the doorway. “But I just got here. The cats need me.”
Su turned her back on all of them one final time. “Whatever. I’ll call you when I find anything. Hoff, I’m using your login code. Uh. Thanks for sharing it.”
“Would you like to carry me?
” Mighty Mighty asked Briar with big round eyes. “I find I am weary.”
Briar glanced up at Lincoln as if asking whether this was normal before she said, “Absolutely.”
The three of them made it almost to the staff dining room before Briar put her hand on Lincoln’s arm, a thing she did a lot, and said, “We’ve got to fly to Yassa Port, update my nanobots, and find out what’s going on with the Sikong. I just know Steven is up to something. Something bad. If we can prove it, I can get my job back and sell you that part.”
“Nanobots?” Lincoln asked, confused.
She pulled a face. “After yesterday, I admit this is more dangerous than I expected, and I want to protect myself. I’m overdue.”
Most people on Trash Planet couldn’t afford the annual renewals of nanobots to protect their health, though Lincoln had had a dose before taking this job. On his new salary, nanobots were going to be out of reach, so hopefully all this violence and scheming would be done before his wore off. He could understand Briar wanting the nanobots, but the rest? Risky and impractical.
“Returning to Yassa is an excellent plan,” Mighty chimed in, nestled in the crook of Briar’s arm as if people toted him around all day. Which they did. Sometimes he didn’t even push them to do it. “Once we find out what they’ve done with the converter, we could just steal it.”
“I thought you couldn’t skip while holding bigger stuff?” Briar asked. “That part is almost as big as you.”
“I’m sure, now that I’ve done it once, it will become a simple matter. I did so enjoy stealing the inductor card and wouldn’t mind becoming a professional cat burglar. On behalf of my people, of course. I don’t know why we weren’t just stealing everything we needed the previous two years.”
Lincoln gave him a look. “Because stealing is wrong?”
“Now you sound like Dear Barbara.” Mighty hopped out of Briar’s arms and trotted down the hallway. “You don’t have to come. I’m sure you’re expected on the Catamaran to complete the bathroom repairs. Briar and I will catch a ride with Hoff and save Su’s fuel.”