by Jody Wallace
Briar’s stomach plummeted. “The men from yesterday?”
“I’m flattered you think I know about the men from yesterday when I surely wasn’t there myself in the cryopod bay of an ancient gen ship on Tank Union property to witness the…disagreement. But I do. And no, they’re simply contractors. The purchase was made by a certain, well, worker procurement corporation, who is sending a Very Important Person to fetch their merchandise.”
Slavers, Briar realized. Steven had stolen the part and sold it to slavers off the books, so he could keep all the money. Did TUB know about Steven’s side business? The irony of Steven using the money he basically stole from them to bribe his way into being one of them wasn’t lost on her.
Perhaps she was better off not being on the board.
“They haven’t taken it off planet yet. Where is it?” Lincoln asked.
“I’m sure it’s somewhere very safe,” Han-Ja said, emphasizing the last word. An attendant drifted by, and Han-Ja indicated that the man should add mota to the hookah, one of the other nonpoisonous native plants on Trash Planet. All the rest ranged from annoying to deadly. They fell silent until that was completed.
Tank Union did have safes for valuable items in the board offices. Each member had a safe, though they didn’t share the locations of the safes, and the directors as a group also had larger holding safes. Presumably Steven would put an item as desirable as the Mozim converter into a safe, since he would assume everyone was as thieving and dishonest as he was. But where would the safe be? And how many protections would it have that a cat attempting to transport itself into it might activate?
“Why didn’t you tell me he was doing this?” she demanded once they had privacy again.
Han-Ja glanced at the ceiling, in approximately the same direction Lincoln had, before answering. “You didn’t ask.”
“I didn’t know to ask.” She should have known. Should have known Steven was cheating in all sorts of ways, but she had disregarded him as a minor irritation, focusing instead on her upward mobility—in hopes of leading a more stimulating double life than giving Hoff discounts. What a waste of years.
“Then you should have asked what you should ask,” Han-Ja said, a sly grin splitting his face.
“That’s stupid,” Lincoln said. “Greedy.”
“A man’s got to make—”
“You have enough. Enough that you could choose not to hurt others.”
Han-Ja raised an eyebrow and twirled the hookah tube. “You don’t know what I have.”
Busy man has millions of DICs, said Mighty’s voice in Briar’s head. So he was monitoring them. He should stay.
“You have over eight million in savings,” Lincoln stated. Mighty must be talking to him, too. “You want to leave Trash Planet.”
Han-Ja dropped the tube onto the table, the mouthpiece clattering. Was he surprised or simply finished smoking? “Who wouldn’t want to leave this place?”
Meeeeeeeeeee, Mighty drawled. His mental voice didn’t sound quite right. Where had he stashed himself? Could he see them? He’d need to be close by to be talking to them. I’m not going anyyyyywhere.
Lincoln’s frown deepened. “You told the truth about the robot, and you’re going to give us all the information about the buyer Steven Wat contacted. It’s important.”
“Yes, I did, and I already told you everything I…” A dreamy expression crossed Han-Ja’s handsome features. “Well, okay. Selectstar Corporation’s representative is arriving on a hired Q-cruiser the day after tomorrow, wormhole stability permitting, and using an ID-scrubbed roundabout to land in Yassa Port and make contact with Steven at 1900 hours local time for the trade. They’re meeting at the Express train waystation in the Mire.”
“A slaver corp,” Lincoln repeated, his voice a growl. “You’re sure?”
“Oh, yeah,” Han-Ja agreed.
“How did you find this out?” Briar breathed, almost afraid questions would demolish Han-Ja’s miraculous straightforwardness. Selectstar was one of the smaller staffing organizations, or so they labeled themselves. They also weren’t welcome on Trash Planet, yet Steven felt confident inviting them here.
He picked up the hookah again, his movements as slow as a gravity well, and took a long drag. “Axel and I have an agreement. Humans tend to underestimate the independence of our mechanical friends, you know.”
“I didn’t know that,” Briar said. Axel had access to everything at Tank Union, as well as individual factories and garages, and who knew what else? It was their one-bot font of knowledge. “How long has Axel known about Steven being a crook? Why wouldn’t Axel report it?”
“You’d have to ask Axel that.” Han-Ja tilted his head back and blew smoke rings. “Steven’s got himself rigged up as an independent for his unauthorized sales, so it’s hidden from the rest of the company.”
“Do you think Axel would be willing to—”
“I can fly!” Mighty shouted right before a black, furry bomb splatted in the middle of their hookah table. The tall, smoldering pipe tumbled to the side. Hoses and nozzles flew in all directions, and scented water splashed Briar in the face.
Han-Ja tumbled backward, scrambling away from the table. “Is that a…cat?”
“I am!” Mighty yowled, rolling onto his back. “I am cat!”
Mighty had apparently lost his grip—or jumped—and plummeted from the low beams of the ceiling of the freelancer bar. Briar gasped and surged forward, reaching for the feline. He didn’t seem to be injured. Exactly. He squirmed to one side and then the other, his tail puffed up and his pupils dilated to their fullest, blackest extent.
She didn’t know enough about cats to gauge what was going on here, but she knew enough about the people on Trash Planet to hide Mighty as quickly as possible.
“I am cat,” Mighty said again, his tail whipping wildly. His paws raked through the air, fending Briar off.
“He’s stoned.” With his much longer arms, Lincoln swept Mighty to his chest and tucked him into the overcoat, wincing when a claw caught his bare skin. Around them, other customers began to chatter and pester their table for explanations.
Briar leapt to her feet and held up her hands as if inviting applause. Between this and her powder blue coveralls, she was about to redirect all the attention to herself. “It’s a robot! Specially constructed in one of our very own Trash Planet factories. Wasn’t it lifelike?”
“I am cat,” Mighty protested, muffled by Lincoln’s clothing.
“I can offer you a discount on the first models to come off the assembly line,” she continued in her best salesperson lingo. “One hundred percent reclaimed materials, of course. Nothing like those overpriced elite models you’d find at Earth Conservancy and a much better companion to boot. Just contact me. The bartender knows who I am.”
The closest patrons clapped, weakly, the thick fumes in the back room having prevented them from seeing exactly what had happened. A pipey little voice repeating, “I am cat!” over and over and a robot companion sighting shouldn’t place the Catamaran in danger of discovery. Not when Briar had rationalized it away before anyone got curious. She could thank Han-Ja and his revelation about Axel for her inspiration.
Unfortunately, the smoke hadn’t prevented her muse, Han-Ja, from seeing exactly what Mighty had done.
“That voice was in my head,” he said to Briar. Vapor wreathed around him from the toppled hookah, and she would have to hope he wrote this off tomorrow as a hallucination or a bad trip. Who knew cats could get drunk on secondhand mota smoke? “I just…told you what you wanted to know. Spat it right out like a bad protein snack.”
“Freebie, remember?” Briar helped Lincoln to his feet, hindered as he was by an intoxicated, squirming cat inside his shirt. “Appreciate all you did. Won’t forget.”
They practically raced out of the bar before Mighty realized he could skip away from Lincoln and wreak further havoc in front of humans who didn’t need to know he existed.
Chapter 7
“I don’t have a flyer to send for you,” Su told Lincoln when he commed the box factory. Hoff had indeed transported them to Yassa Port, but they hadn’t expected to need to leave so precipitously. And he hadn’t expected a backlash from his past to nearly flay him alive. “The Moll’s being used for scavenging, the roundabout’s at the Catamaran with Javier, and the Tomen is a no-go never-go.”
Inside his coveralls, Mighty Mighty snored loudly enough that Lincoln could hear it over the traffic on the street. Market District was three thousand kilometers from Bristleback Range District where the box factory was located. By air, not bad. By land, eight or nine hours on the high-speed Express.
There wasn’t enough time in the universe for Lincoln to digest what he’d learned, though. A worker procurement corporation was responsible for Lincoln’s undoing. He didn’t know which one, as the people who’d conned him had hardly shared their secrets, but he’d deduced that much.
And he couldn’t let his personal dishonor interfere with the current situation. If the VIP was arriving in two days, they didn’t have many hours to burn. He, Briar, and the cat couldn’t hope to stop the trade without returning to the box factory and coming up with a plan. They’d barely managed to discover the trade itself without giving everything away. Only Briar’s quick thinking had saved Mighty from a painful unveiling.
Briar emerged from Tank Union’s apartment building pushing a trolley of pale blue luggage, and Lincoln hastened to join her. Her scowl added a dangerous cast to her pretty face. “Did you get us a ride?”
He hated to tell that scowl the bad news, but he shook his head. “We rent a flyer or take the Express.” Ground transpo was a heck of a lot cheaper since it ran on trash turned fuel—and trash was something this planet had plenty of.
Her face scrunched up even more. “The Express. I haven’t had to ride that since… Well, it doesn’t matter. We don’t have the DICs for a flyer.”
Lincoln was about to tell her that he did, but then he’d be cleaned out. They might need cash for something more urgent than eight wasted hours when the clock was ticking. He couldn’t imagine what, but his imagination wasn’t one for stretching into what-ifs.
If he’d been able to project what-ifs, he’d make fewer mistakes. Such as, what if the cat gets high on the hookah and causes a ruckus in front of a man who makes a living selling information?
Briar tapped the lump under Lincoln’s coveralls fondly, considering Mighty had almost ruined everything. “Is he still asleep?”
“Snoring,” Lincoln assured her. “He won’t be skipping for awhile.”
Mighty had proven he could read minds and push humans when he was under the influence, but who knew about skipping? The cats had been experimenting with their abilities, and drunkenness probably wasn’t something they’d considered.
Well, they would now.
“Nearest Express station is around the corner, at least.” She tugged her baggage cart without much effort—it was motorized—so he didn’t offer to help. He’d learned not to offer just because he was bigger than someone else. One, they might be offended. Two, they might come to expect it and be offended anytime he didn’t. “My history of employment with Hoff is no secret, so it shouldn’t be suspicious if I rent a bunk with Su. I really appreciate her letting me stay.”
“You worked in hazmat?” He propped open the door that led into the Express depot. Her luggage wasn’t enough to be considered freight, so they could go through the front entrance and buy regular tickets.
She grimaced. “Long enough to know it wasn’t for me. I’m better at sales.”
The Express train encircled Trash Planet in a sketchy but unbroken band that attempted to connect all the major ports, cities, and districts. The luckiest factories had snagged space near the line or had a line built out to them, but that didn’t include Su’s factory. The line also skirted Hazer District for safety reasons.
The depot buzzed with activity, passengers buying tickets, lined up for the next car, waiting to greet incomers. This appeared to be a large, central hub with a number of tracks. The high ceiling echoed with human noise and the thud of giant engines. Instead of a hundred linked cars with long delays between trains, the Express ran three-module sets in a frequent rotation. They’d take the global line, disembark at the tiny Bristleback Range depot, and catch another ride from there.
Lincoln negotiated for a tiny private berth, such as it was, so they could stash the luggage inside with them—slightly less than buying a third ticket. Avoiding the cheaper group seating area would also cut down on accidental cat sightings. Hopefully. Who knew what Mighty would do once he woke up?
The next three-top filled up, so Lincoln and Briar boarded the one after. Though it was awkward to negotiate the passageway to their berth while carrying tons of fancy luggage and a cat inside his clothes, they managed, snagging a window berth to boot. The hard blue plastene cases had to be piled on the rear-facing seat as well as in the overhead bins, leaving them crunched into the front-facing seat together. The cabin was small, the seats hard, and the air stale.
The loudspeaker crackled, and a voice, popping in and out, announced their departure. The train jolted into motion, clunking and groaning, but soon became surprisingly smooth.
Briar slid the door closed, locked it, and cued Lincoln to undo his overcoat. “You have to be burning up.” Her face had flushed from exertion, and hairs had escaped her ponytail to fly around her head.
He sure wasn’t cold, not with Mighty generating heat like a puddle of molten lava and Briar doing the same thing. Did her temperature run high? As he’d spent most of his life in climate controlled ships and space stations, the heat generated by the woman and the cat felt good. Trash Planet’s clime remained an adjustment.
When he didn’t immediately strip, Briar said, “Let me help.” She unbuttoned his overcoat to the waist and began working on the seal of his coveralls. She freed Mighty’s head, realized Lincoln wasn’t wearing much of a shirt beneath, and halted. “Oh. Sorry.”
Lincoln eased the seal closed, hiding his tattered tank top beneath the coveralls and cat again. He didn’t have a lot in the way of clothing. Or other possessions. Not since he’d left Oka. “Thought I’d be in the factory all day.”
“It’s just that seeing you in so many layers, knowing Mighty is inside there, too, is giving me a hellacious hot flash.” She dragged the back of her hand across her forehead and sighed.
“Then don’t look.” The minute he suggested it, he wished he hadn’t, because a glimmer of hurt feelings washed over her face. “Does the window open?”
“No, that would violate too many safety standards. Not that we abide by as many as where you’re from. I mean, I’ve heard that about Oka. That you’re very regulated.” She leaned as far away from him on the seat as she could, which wasn’t far. It was meant to be a roomy two person compartment, not two people—one of them very big—a bunch of luggage, and a cat.
He pulled the stretchy hat off his head and shoved it in the pocket of the overcoat. To take the coat off, he’d have to stand up and contort himself in the tiny space and would probably elbow Briar in the head. Not worth it. “Mechanicals and repair work are steady jobs in Oka, for sure.”
“So what’s it like, growing up in the Oka Conglomerate? The Free People,” she said, one of the ways Oka was referred to in the rest of the galaxy. There were other, less flattering ways.
“Kinda strict.” He’d been raised by his father and grandparents. His mother had perished in a accident trying to repair an extension pod on one of the outer stations. They hadn’t even been able to recover her body, because she’d been on a space walk when it happened. But he’d had food, a home, a version of safety, an education. More than most of the Obsidian Rim could lay claim to. “Not bad otherwise.”
She stared at him. He stared back. What did she expect, an essay? “That’s it?”
His curtness was often interpreted as disinterest or annoyance, and he didn’t want Briar to think
he didn’t like her. But he didn’t know how he felt about Oka anymore.
“I got kicked out,” he found himself admitting. “It’s tarnished my attitude.”
She adjusted herself more comfortably in the corner, her blue eyes wide. Nothing to occupy them for eight hours but the loudspeaker’s terrible crackle and his life story. “Why?”
He wished he hadn’t told her. He hadn’t told anyone, except his Da, right before he’d had to go. Not even Frank knew. It had been hard enough to land a job halfway across the galaxy without references. Admitting why he had no references would have made it impossible. Folks from Oka were regarded as isolationist and privileged, yet with high standards—that he’d failed to meet.
“Being stupid,” he finally allowed. “Getting conned. A few times.”
“You’re not stupid.” She raised her leg onto the seat and wedged her boot against his thigh, since there was nowhere else to put it. “You just talk slow.”
“I’m not smart, either.” He was good with his hands, with machines, apparently with cats. Surprisingly, he was good with kids, and had led mechanical apprenticeships on Oka along with managing a repair shop. He’d thought he’d follow a path of job and family like his parents, but he’d succumbed to a schemer one too many times for the Oka Council to accept.
When his mistake had gotten a batch of expensive stellarship components stolen by outsiders—outsiders who’d duped him into thinking they were insiders but instead turned out to be slavers—it had been the last straw. His bad judgment just wasn’t a good fit in the Oka Conglomerate.
“Did you have a family when they kicked you out? Oh my stars. Lincoln.” She bent forward and grasped his shoulder. The train slowed and sped up again, joggling them closer. “That would be awful. I’ve never hoped someone didn’t have a family before, but—”
“My father,” he said before she got too twisted.