Embustero- Pale Boundaries

by Scott Cleveland

  The old spacer led him to a gleaming brass and crystal facade protruding from the wall several meters into the corridor. Doormen stood at each entrance ready to tip their hats to the hotel’s well-heeled patrons as they came and went.

  “This can’t be right,” Terson said, referring to Druski’s note.

  “Only Mason-Grant on the station,” his guide shrugged.

  Terson approached the façade hesitantly, expecting to be turned away, but the doorman tipped his hat and held the heavy door open for him with a cheerful greeting. A few meters inside stood the corridor’s structural bulkhead and the huge pressure doors waiting to slam shut at the first indication of rapid decompression.

  “Welcome to the Mason-Grant,” the desk clerk purred. “How may I help you, gentlemen?”

  “Joseph Pelletier,” Terson said. “I have a reservation, I think.”

  “Nothing under that name, I’m afraid,” she frowned. “What vessel?”

  “The Embu-er, Ladybird,” Terson corrected.

  “Here we go. And the reservation number?” Terson read it off the note and waited while her fingers sped over her keyboard. “All right, gentlemen, the Ladybird has prepaid a suite, double occupancy, and transferred funds to a station expense account.”

  “Double occupancy?” Terson asked.

  “Yes, sir. Are there more in your party?”

  “Nay, lass, just us,” the old spacer told her. Terson looked at him sharply, about to contradict his claim, but held his peace when the old man managed to convey a wink with his one good eye.

  “Your keys double as debit cards for your expense account, good anywhere on the station,” she explained as she laid them on the counter. Terson scooped them up before his opportunistic companion had a chance to lay claim to one. “The previous occupants checked out late because of the flight delays. We’ll have your accommodations cleaned within the hour. In the meantime I’ve arranged complimentary food and beverages in the lounge.

  “Enjoy your stay at the Mason-Grant.”

  “I don’t know what the hell you think you’re doing,” Terson growled under his breath as they crossed the lobby, “but I suggest you find yourself another mark.”

  “Just keep smilin’ and get me a brew and vittles,” the old man replied.

  “How ‘bout I keep smiling and bounce your sorry ass out the door?”

  “Dinner’s on the house—don’t cost ye a thing,” the spacer reminded him. “And I get crossways of the local gendarmes I’ll see to it ye spend more time in the pokey than ye got years.”

  The motive behind Druski’s generosity took on a sinister aspect and explained the dual occupancy. Obviously the Embustero’s captain wasn’t comfortable with Terson wandering the station without a minder. “You working for Shadrack?” he challenged.

  “That’d be a hoot,” the old timer scoffed. He headed for the lounge, motioning Terson to follow along when he sensed hesitation.

  Discretion demanded that Terson play along for the moment; there was nothing to gain by calling attention to himself now if he could ditch the geezer later. The old man ordered an incredible quantity of food and fell to devouring it as if he hadn’t eaten in days.

  “Just who the hell are you?” Terson demanded.

  “Cormack MacLeod,” the old spacer slurped between bites, as if that explained everything.

  “I don’t blame you for filling your belly,” Terson told him, “but I’m going to leave the table now and I don’t want to see you again.”

  “Nay, finish your grub; I’m done. You just tell Shadrack he’s obliged to meet wi’ me before the Embustero scoots. Or else.”

  “Tell him yourself; I’m not part of his crew.”

  “Aye, that explains the reservation and expense account. I ain’t daft, lad.” MacLeod stuffed a scrap of paper listing a temporary message drop in Terson’s breast pocket then drained his mug and stood, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. “You tell’im.” He strode away, leaving Terson to finish a cold meal and warm drink.

  If the old spacer wasn’t Terson’s intended nursemaid, who and where was he or she? The delay in reaching the station may have temporarily thrown off a local minder, and if Shadrack had dispatched one of his own people for the duty the orbital traffic jam could well have disrupted the rendezvous whether they departed the Embustero before or after Terson.

  Either way, they’d come looking for him at the Mason-Grant so it was in Terson’s best interest to be elsewhere—and that presented a problem. He had only fifty euros free and clear under his alias. The expense account that came with the room would keep him comfortable, but also leave a trail everywhere he used it and might be cut off at any time.

  And that meant he’d better use it soon, preferably before Shadrack figured out Terson wasn’t where he was supposed to be. A scout up and down the corridor near the Mason-Grant identified the vendors he needed and he visited each in quick succession for a new carry-on luggage case, two sets of civilian clothes, a week’s supply of undergarments, toiletries and a new shipsuit. A check of the station directory sent him down a deck where he purchased a case of surplus space rations and other items he needed for moderately comfortable corridor camping.

  He changed clothes in a public restroom and used twenty euros of his limited personal funds to rent a locker, then checked the time. Just over an hour and a half had passed since checking in at the hotel—still not an unreasonable length of time to be absent. Time to take a breather and consider the future.

  His plans upon leaving the Embustero had been vague to begin with, limited to the pursuit of employment. Nothing had changed there but the urgency, brought about more by his encounter with MacLeod than whatever scheme Shadrack had dreamed up. The possibility that the freighter’s captain wouldn’t let him go had lurked in the back of his mind since being released from the brig, and finding evidence to support the suspicion was perversely comforting.

  MacLeod, on the other hand…

  If MacLeod knew that the Ladybird and Embustero were one in the same it meant that he likely did have information detrimental to Shadrack and his crew. If his business with Shadrack didn’t work out to his satisfaction and he turned that information over to the authorities, the authorities would seize the ship’s accounts and anyone using them right along with it. Terson’s troubles on Nivia made it unlikely he could convince them that he was an innocent victim of circumstance.

  Remaining at Tammuz barely entered his mind before he rejected it. Even getting to the spacer habitats in the system required entering quarantine first, a process that would keep him bottled up the same as if he’d been incarcerated. The fastest way out was to get a job aboard a ship, preferably one departing within the next few hours.

  He headed for the station employment office and joined a line of fellow travelers desperate enough to wait for over an hour to look at the work-for-passage listings. The openings left when he got his turn were shockingly slim, limited to specialties he wasn’t qualified for. His next option was to buy a ticket with the expense account if he could find one that would get underway soon, but the earliest flights out were booked solid and then some.

  His only option left was to avoid both Shadrack and MacLeod until the Embustero’s departure made hiding a moot issue. He needed someplace to stay, but to do it he needed funds that couldn’t be traced to him, at least not easily. On any other station he could have drawn cash against the expense account and gone to ground, but the statute-mandated cashless economy on the station made that impossible—though he found it unlikely that any society could go truly cashless as long as there were transactions that demanded anonymity.

  The only assets he had were what he could sell, loath as he was to go that route so soon, but there was no help for it. He checked the station directory and set out again, three decks up this time.

  The pawnbroker peered at the stone in Virene’s ring through a jeweler’s loop, then rubbed the band against a small touchstone which he slid into a mass spectrometer. “Eightee
n carat,” he noted, “very nice. Do you want to pawn it, or sell it?”

  “Give me a quote on both,” Terson said.

  He pursed his lips. “I’d loan you two fifty,” he said. “I’ll buy it for scrap price on the band, and a quarter of the retail on the stone—say fifteen hundred.”

  Terson’s throat felt tight; he swallowed—hard—and delayed a decision by gesturing to the gun case. “What about that?”

  The pawnbroker frowned. “I’ll tell you the truth, son, there’s not much margin in guns, here. Lots of tourists buy them for the hunts and sell’em right back on the way out again. I can’t compete with the outfitters. I’d charge you fifty euros up front to break the seal and what I’d be willing to loan might not make up the difference. You’ll get a better deal if you go straight to an armory.”

  Terson collected Virene’s ring and picked up the case. “I’ll get back to you.”

  AERIE ARMORY

  GUNSMITHING, SALES AND STORAGE

  The best bang for your buck

  Edwin Aerie, proprietor

  The armory’s façade was simple and understated, nearly invisible among the garish exhibitions of its competitors, which employed so many flashing lights to attract attention to their wares and shooting galleries that merely looking put Terson’s teeth on edge. The steady stream of tourists and wealthy carousers milling about the entrances created a barrier that he was loath to approach, much lest attempt to penetrate.

  He assumed Aerie’s was closed, as he hadn’t seen anyone enter or exit the entire time he watched, but then the door opened and a man in well-worn khakis carrying a long rifle case stepped into the corridor. The man paused to raise a hand in farewell to someone inside before striding off, hugging the wall to skirt the crowd.

  Open for business, apparently.

  The moment Terson crossed the bulkhead threshold from the corridor he caught the faint odor of oil, metal and leather drifting out of the workshop in the rear. The floor was scuffed and dull, the aisle ways cramped and narrow to accommodate as many weapons displays as possible without leaving a centimeter of clearance that wasn’t mandated by station safety regulations.

  Terson’s entrance tripped a chime that summoned someone from the back room a moment later. The man was thick of build, gray-streaked red beard trimmed to double points close beneath his chin, and his hair was secured in a loose ponytail. He looked Terson over before he spoke:

  “I don’t have a shooting gallery,” he said with polite neutrality.

  “I’m not looking for one,” Terson replied.

  “Excuse me, my mistake. I’m Ed Aerie; how can I help you?”

  Terson lifted the gun case to the counter. “I have a handgun I might be interested in selling.”

  “It’s a handgun, you say?” Aerie asked, hefting the case in his hands. “I’m intrigued. Let’s have a look.”

  “How much to reseal it?” Terson hastened.

  “On the house,” he assured Terson. He scanned the chip for the station’s records and sliced through the tough plastic tape with a tool. “Oh…my…” he whistled when he opened the lid. “This thing is enormous. How’s it fire?”

  “No idea,” Terson admitted. “Never had any ammunition for it.”

  “Mmm. Never seen one like this before,” he said. He transferred it to a pad on the counter and looked it over. “Pretty old, I’d say—the polish isn’t the original finish, though. That will reflect on collector value, if it has any. Big question is: Does it function? No way to tell for sure, without ammunition.” He operated the slide a couple of times and did a functional check on the trigger and safety. “I’m afraid I can’t make you a fair offer without doing a little research,” he said at last. “I can probably have an answer for you tomorrow, if you’re not in a hurry.”

  “No,” Terson sighed, “no hurry.”

  He spent the night on the floor in the passenger terminal a few dozen meters from the locker containing his gear. He wasn’t the only one corridor camping, either, and it seemed that he’d found the best hiding spot possible among hundreds of stranded passengers. Station security officers made regular rounds, but there were enough drunks and other rowdies about that any particular individual with the discipline to stay calm and quiet became invisible in the sea of bodies. He’d found a spot near enough the traffic boards to monitor the Embustero’s scheduled departure for Nivia and thus far there’d been no changes to the flight plan.

  He woke in the morning with a growling stomach and the glimmer of an idea. He satisfied the former with a space ration while he entertained the latter. All he really needed to do, he realized, was launder the funds in the expense account—find a way to transfer them from the Embustero’s name to his, legally, or with at least the appearance of legality. Any jurisdiction that micro-managed its economy to the point of prohibiting cash transactions surely had to contend with an unauthorized alternative. All Terson had to do was find it, and he was certain that it wouldn’t be in the station’s tourist district.

  The businesses that catered to the needs and vices of the station’s full-time residents were clustered in the same quarter on each deck, forming a more or less vertical column. The advertising was less prominent than elsewhere, the station directory entries less descriptive, and the inhabitants, though not unfriendly, quick to refer the occasional wandersome tourist or passenger back to the appropriate area.

  Terson bought a bottle of popular liquor on the Embustero’s account from a shop near the Mason-Grant and made rounds among the local eateries, asking the same question until he found one that didn’t immediately show him the door again. “We don’t deal in hot merchandise here,” the bartender said flatly.

  “It’s not stolen.” Terson backed up his assertion by flattening the receipt next to the bottle. “Just bad timing.”

  “So return it.”

  “No time,” Terson replied. “You interested, or not?”

  The man picked up the bottle to inspect the seal, set it back down and went back to polishing glasses. “Special of the day, double portions. Choice of beverage, one refill.” It was less than a quarter of the purchase price and Terson lodged an objection because he was expected to. “Take it or leave it.”

  Terson took it. The bartender cracked the seal and splashed a spoonful into a shot glass to sample. Satisfied, he placed Terson’s order and moved on to the next customer. Terson caught the man’s eye when he finished eating. “Who does a guy see if he doesn’t have a receipt?”

  “Meet me in the serviceway with two more bottles and I’ll tell you.”

  The fence that the bartender directed him to was happy to tell Terson what commodities she was willing to pay top dollar for once he convinced her he could provide proof the property wasn’t stolen—at least as far as the station cops would expect a secondhand dealer to know. He embarked on a whirlwind shopping spree in the hours that followed, concentrating on high-end and luxury consumables like fine spirits, imported Terran chocolate, caviars from a dozen worlds and a slew of mild intoxicants.

  He entered the corridor again with thirty-five hundred euros in his account, only half the value of the original allowance—though three times what the fence normally paid—but as it wasn’t his money to begin with he didn’t fret the loss if it meant he didn’t have to sell Virene’s ring. He decided against using any of it for lodging, assuming there was anything available; his finances would stretch farther, and the comfort of a room wasn’t worth having his name in a database, especially if the overcrowded passenger terminal offered better obscurity.

  Edwin Aerie turned his current customer over to an assistant and motioned to Terson with a broad smile. “What you’ve got here is a real piece of history,” he beamed as he laid the weapon out on a pad. “This is a fifty caliber automag by Bemel Arms of North America. They only manufactured fifteen hundred of these, for the Terran Fifth Special Forces Regiment, and most were lost or destroyed when the Fifth SFR got wiped out on Barataria.”

  The Fifth SF
R, he went on to explain, was stood up specifically to guard against v’ank’i incursions across the borders of the Terran Deadworlds along the narrow strip of desolate systems that constituted the Starry Aleutians. A v’ank’i, he went on, was a massive, high-gravity evolved creature best described as resembling a carnivorous rhinoceros with arms. Their bodies were covered with overlapping plates of thick keratin, a natural armor resistant to conventional small arms fire.

  “The .50 magnum was the smallest handgun round that stood a chance of punching through,” he finished. “The standard-issue long gun—also by BAMA—used the same round and they came as a pair. You don’t happen to have the rifle, too…?”

  Terson shook his head. “Afraid not.”

  “Seemed unlikely, but you never know,” Aerie nodded, obviously disappointed. “At any rate, I went ahead and x-rayed for stress fractures and checked the internal workings; no reason it’s not safe to fire. So…” he grinned. “Interested?”

  Terson smiled back. “Absolutely!”

  He took Terson to the shop’s test range, configured similarly to the one aboard the Embustero, and clamped the weapon in a gun vise. “Nobody makes factory ammunition for these anymore,” he explained as he loaded the magazine, “but the casing for a 12.5 millimeter express rifle cartridge should work just fine if you trim it down. Twelve-point-five express is pretty common anywhere there’s big game hunting.” He handed Terson one of each; the rifle cartridge was as long as his index finger, the rounds he’d made up for the pistol half as long.

  He fished a lanyard through the trigger and racked the slide, then directed Terson toward an armored vestibule behind the firing line and followed, spooling out the lanyard behind them. “I’ve never hand-built a cartridge this size before,” he said as he handed out hearing protection, “and the original propellant isn’t available. The manuals say this is an equivalent load, but better safe than sorry, eh?”