Against That Time

by Edward McKeown

  “Who was the offworlder you were talking to?” Dusko asked. “Anything I would be interested in?”

  “A rift-haul for a prospector. She’s cautious. No up front info from her.”

  “So no way to set her up,” Dusko shrugged. “Doesn’t sound worth my effort. You will let me know if there’s a chance for mutual profit off her.”

  “I did last time,” I said.

  “True,” Dusko said. “Their personal effects brought a nice sum. If it eases your conscience, they turned out to be druggers.”

  I tried not to remember the traders I’d led into Dusko’s ambush. But it was either them or my ship and the ship was all I had.

  “Good doing business with you,” Dusko said. “As Truf said, there will be other opportunities. See you around, human.” The languid Dua-Denlenn stepped back into the darkness, followed by his hulking guard. I leaned back against the wall, feeling the night air sift through my shirt and fighting the chill. Dusko was right. I was prudent. I had a knife in my boot and a slug-thrower in my back belt, but I wouldn’t try an Okaran with the small caliber weapon at such close range. Throwing down on any of the established Guild was insane, anyway.

  I decided to sleep in my ship, an old Dauntless class scout I’d named Sinner, a leftover from the Conchirri Wars long ago. Before heading out, I arranged for the port recorder to forward any message from Candace Deveraux to Sinner.

  I hopped a native transport, which was the cheapest transport available. The open cart, towed by two oxen-like animals, was an odd contrast to ground cars or flitters but it was emblematic of Kandalor, which combined poverty and wealth as well as high and low tech. It had been a forgotten world until a Confed expedition stumbled across it and the races of the Old Concordiat. A few native Kandalorians, muffled in their robes, glanced at me with their bulbous black eyes but otherwise ignored me. I returned the favor and tried to breathe shallowly, the smell of the natives competed with that of the draft animals.

  Sinner sat at the spaceport’s edge under a metal overhang I’d rented to keep off the worst of the weather. She was about thirty meters long, a bulky ovoid with short stubby wings and lots of interior volume. I’d painted her anti-corrosive chrome yellow. Unlike military craft, we civvies want to be seen. I keyed in the secure code and locked myself in, letting my breath go in a rush. On Kandalor you live like a rabbit or a wolf. Maybe I’d have an extra big helping of carrots tonight.

  One week later, I was doing some scut-work on a small Indie-freighter when my comp buzzed. I took off my gauntlets and sealed the engine port before answering. “Hello.”

  “It’s Candace. Time to go prospecting. How soon can you launch?’

  “I’m in good shape for a Rift run this side of the 38th in four hours. If we are going out farther, I’ll need to add wing tanks.”

  “We aren’t going farther. I’ve got the flight plan on file with the Port Authority. They’ll download to you just ahead of launch.”

  “Cautious, aren’t you?”

  “Wouldn’t want any problems with local interests.”

  I swallowed. “There won’t be.”

  “Good, I’d hate to shoot such a pretty boy, at least until I was through with him.” She laughed and clicked off.

  Candace showed up at the Sinner early, as I expected. She liked to set the pace. Two men accompanied her. One was tall, with dark, suspicious eyes and a hooked nose over a beard, unusual in someone who expected to use a space helmet. The other was a dark-skinned like Candace, but whipcord thin and balding, with the look of a spacer.

  “My associates,” Candace said, gesturing to hook-nose. “Harung.” She pointed at the other. “Maku Treska.” Both nodded.

  “We’ve got a cargo sled coming. My boys will do the loading,” she said.

  “Long as I check it after,” I said.

  Treska looked at me. “The kid doesn’t trust us to load. I was flying when you were waiting to be delivered.”

  Candace looked at him with annoyance. “Quiet, Treska. I don’t want to fly with anyone dumb enough not to check his own ship’s load.”

  Treska grumbled but headed for Sinner’s capacious cargo bay. Harung gave me an unfriendly stare and followed.

  I looked at her. “No weapons on my ship. Hope you left your knee-shooter in the port lockup. Explosive decompression can ruin your whole day.”

  Candace grinned at me. “Gonna pat me down, Wrik? I’ve got a lot of area to cover, many dangerous curves to hide things.”

  Her smile and manner had probably bent men to her wishes all her life. “Sounds like fun, but I don’t think I want to pat down your buddies, though, so we’ll use a scanner.”

  She gave a look of mock disappointment. I could feel my blood stirring. Human women were rare on Kandalor, and I had little to offer one. Truth was I didn’t have much experience there, either. Candace’s mocking smile told me that she suspected it.

  Stick to business, I thought, you’re out of your depth with her.

  I checked the load and scanned my passenger for weapons. We boarded Sinner and settled in. Candace rode in the second seat on the flight deck. Her companions strapped in the far less comfortable cargo compartment, grumbling loudly enough to be heard. Candace smiled and shrugged.

  Sinner kicked free of Kandalor’s surface and started a slow ascent. Kandalor stretched out forever below us, seducing the eye and the imagination. Empires had come and gone on this world while humans lived in caves and waved stone axes.

  “Beautiful,” Candace said, looking out at the mountain and huge forests beyond the spaceport area. In the distance lay the ruins of one of the many lost civilizations. Haze made the wildly tilting towers appear blue.

  “Yep,” I said. “You’ve got spaceports and primitive tribes all on the same world, an archeologist’s treasure trove.”

  “Here and in space,” Candace said absently. “Those empires extended out for hundreds of light years. Lots of good stuff out there.”

  “Going to tell me what we’re looking for?” I asked.

  “Just drive the taxi, Honey.”

  “Yes, Ma’am.”

  Candace talked as we boosted toward the Rift, using my ion engine for a slow, steady thrust. I found myself liking her. I didn’t want to; friends are an expensive luxury for a Rifter. I set the autopilot and we turned in early. I had trouble falling asleep, thinking of Candace’s lush body in the bunk above me, wondering what it would be like.

  We came up on the Rift in the next watch, not that there was anything to see. Even in as thick an asteroid belt as the Rift, it would be unusual for any two objects to be in visual range.

  We set course for a large riftoid well in from the edge. One of a million such rocks unvisited by anyone since the planet blew to hell. Gradually the riftoid grew from a tiny point of light to a gray, pitted, roughly spherical rock about 2000 kilometers in diameter. Scanners showed it to be almost pure nickel-iron. A huge impact crater marred part of it.

  “That’s the one,” Harung said. Everyone was crammed into my cockpit, staring hungrily at the pitted gray surface. “Just as I remember it.”

  “Probably part of the old world’s core,” Treska grunted. “That would account for all the metal. It’ll give it a bit more gravity than you usually get in a rock this size.”

  We drifted down to the surface. Treska was right; gravity was strong enough that I didn’t need to fix anchors. I did it anyway, space rewards the cautious.

  “Suit up, everyone,” Candace ordered.

  I looked at her. “I’m just driving the taxi.”

  “Don’t be like that, Honey. Now that we’re here, don’t you want to see what we came for?”

  “Depends.”

  “What do we need him for?” Harung demanded.

  I sighed. “She doesn’t want to leave me behind in the ship so I can hold you up when you come back w
ith whatever treasure you came for.” I looked at Candace. “Ever get tired of working with people who aren’t as smart as you?”

  “No,” she replied. “I only like smart men in bed.”

  Harung glared at me.

  We suited up and walked out onto the surface of the riftoid. Treska unlimbered a large mining scanner. Evidently he got a fix on something, as he began moving in quick little hops, kicking up dust. Candace and Harung followed, lugging their equipment. I thought about waiting where I was, then decided it might be safer to stick with the herd. Five minutes later, we found ourselves in a small crater, looking at an oddly-shaped hatchway of yellow metal nearly three meters across.

  “What the hell is it?” I asked, excitement getting the better of me. Dust indicated that the hatch hadn’t been opened in a long, long time. The design didn’t look like anything I’d ever seen.

  “Maybe an Old Empire asteroid station,” Treska said absently.

  I looked around. “Over 50,000 years old.”

  “Or more,” Treska said. “I spotted it when I was here with a freighter that came out of hyper too close to the Rift and had to dump delta-V to avoid a collision. I kept the readings on my scanner to myself. Those Combine bastards wouldn’t have given me a percentage of any find.”

  “Why don’t you tell him your life story?” Harung growled as he placed heavy jacks around the hatch.

  Candace used a laser drill to place a monofilament probe through what looked like an inspection port. “As you suspected, Treska,” she said, “hard vacuum on the other side. Start the jacks.”

  The power jacks took five minutes to crack the airlock. We used pry bars until we could squeeze through in space suits. A few more minutes on the inner door and we were shining our torches inside.

  The interior of the station was familiar looking; form follows function. We saw a rack of odd-shaped spacesuits hung on the bulkheads. Whatever wore them had been much bigger than a human, multi-legged, with a large skull or a need for a lot of headroom. Boxes and tanks lay all over the floor. The metal of the floor worked with our magnetic boots.

  “This is a military station,” I said.

  Candace looked at me. “Why’s that?”

  “A lot of compartmentation, thick hatches to deal with explosive decompression. Though I’m surprised a military station wouldn’t have been dug deeper, for blast protection.”

  “Maybe it was converted from something?” Harung said.

  “Who knows?” Treska shrugged.

  Candace nodded. We played our flashlights around the gray and white metal halls, looking at unfamiliar inscriptions and dead light panels.

  “It kind of reminds me of the old lifeboat stations they have in Sol’s system from before the advent of hyperdrive.” Candace said.

  “We might find an Old Empire ship,” Harung exclaimed.

  We started down the sloping corridor and came to a partially opened doorway.

  “Christ, look at that.” Treska pointed.

  At our feet lay a large pile of shredded fabric covered with white dust. Nearby lay boots, though not for any human foot, and a thing that could have either been a power rifle or some sort of heavy tool.

  Candace bent down. “Crew. Must have died here in the doorway. Wonder what tore up the uniform?” Cautiously, she pushed open the doorway and looked in, a prybar in one hand and flashlight in the other.

  Harung brayed a laugh. “Looking for something? That corpse has been there for fifty millennia in vacuum. The fibers degraded and fell apart. We’ll bag what’s left for the scientists. They’ll pay plenty for material from the corpse of an unknown species.”

  “Look, a ship!” Candace exclaimed. Her light illuminated a small vessel beyond. It looked like it was made of some translucent, half-melted, dark-green glass. Yet it was recognizably a spacecraft.

  “If you’re right about this being a lifestation,” I said, “there’s your lifeboat.”

  Harung pushed past Candace and me with Treska on his heels. The smaller man accidentally kicked an alien boot. It spun silently away into the darkness beyond our lights. I shuddered.

  Candace knelt by the fragments of fabric and the metal implement. “A weapon?”

  “Maybe,” I said. “It has that look, but I don’t see any sights.”

  “Well, any charge it had must have gone before the pyramids were built.”

  The space beyond was wide and flat, big enough for several small craft. A hatchway that must have once opened outward formed the roof of the hangar; for all that we had seen no sign of the hatch on the surface. Harung and Treska clambered all over the small ship, peering into it with lights.

  “Wrik,” Candace called from the far side. I went over. She was standing over a pile of white dusty fabric and more boots, buckles and webbing. The fabric was shredded like the first one.

  “What the hell?” I said.

  “There’s a passage up ahead. If this is like a Terran lifestation, it will lead to the medical and crew quarters.”

  “After you,” I said.

  She frowned at me. “You’re a bring-up-the-rear kind of guy, aren’t you, Wrik?”

  “You weren’t hiring at Hero’s Hall.”

  We left the others to explore the ship. Our magnetic boots raised a thin film of dust, to hang and fall slowly in the low gravity. Colors here were more vibrant than in the more utilitarian areas. The combinations hurt my eyes.

  We reached the crew quarters. Debris covered the area. All manner of odd-looking furniture lay scattered and broken.

  “Decompression?” Candace asked.

  I shrugged.

  If you enjoyed this excerpt, look for

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  My Outcast State

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