by J. S. Morin
“What’re you planning to do with him? Raise him as your own?”
“I ... I hadn’t thought that far ahead. Just getting away seemed like such a ... such a ...”
“Herculean task?” Carl suggested. She nodded.
“I have to ask, now that I’ve told you,” said Sister Theresa. “That ship you said you drove off, could it have belonged to Harmony Bay?”
Carl waved off her concern. “Naw. That heap wasn’t corporate. Bigger question, would they call in a kidnapping, or would they handle it themselves?”
“I ... I couldn’t say.”
“Well, either way, we can’t be having a defrocked priestess going around in a getup like that. Head down to the cargo hold and find yourself something inconspicuous in the luggage we salvaged. If you find your own stuff, great. If not, just pick something that fits. You got a name from before you joined the church?”
“Esper. My parents named me Esper Theresa. And I thought you said I couldn’t go to the cargo bay.”
“That was before I knew you.”
# # #
Carl headed down before Esper got herself settled in enough to want a change of clothes. The interior of the Mobius looked like someone had set off an explosive charge in an open-air bazaar. Footlockers lay in poorly stacked heaps, while their contents were strewn across the floor in rough piles by type. One of the footlockers had been repurposed to collect currency found among the luggage. P-tech was jumbled into a rough pile while A-tech was laid out neatly to keep it from getting damaged. Sentimental items were clustered near the bay door, unsettling reminders that everything had once belonged to living people with families and friends of their own. Clothing had the largest share of the space—a two-meter high mountain of cloth made from every sort of plant, animal, and chemical known in ARGO space. Roddy and Mriy were hard at work cutting open the remaining footlockers.
“First impressions?” Carl called out as he crossed the hold. He fished a pair of dark glasses from his jacket pocket to protect against the flare of the plasma torches.
Roddy cut through a lock and flicked his torch off. “They seem harmless enough. Might be nice having a blessing on the ship.” He threw back his head and downed the rest of the beer in his hand, tossing the empty can into the pile with the personal items.
“If we end up killing the woman,” Mriy said, “may I keep the little one as a pet? I can make up a bed for him in my quarters.”
“I meant the loot,” Carl replied. “Anything worth keeping?”
“Take your pick of the boutique,” Roddy said, jerking the thumb of one foot at the pile of garments. “Everything looks human in there. Nothing my size.”
“Mort been down yet?”
“He took one look and said to let him know when we were done,” said Roddy. “If you’re looking for him, he’s probably filling his burger-hole in the lounge, gaping at the holovid.”
Mriy shut off her plasma torch. “Carl, come look!” Her pupils were wide behind her welding goggles, nearly circular, her fangs bared in a grin. Roddy beat Carl to Mriy’s side, curiosity lending speed to his low-slung body. “This symbol is like the Earth woman’s pendant.”
Mriy pointed to a book lying atop a pile of folded clothes in the footlocker she had just cut open. Carl was tempted to protest that Esper was Martian, but he was more interested in seeing what her belongings contained. The book’s title was The Holy Bible, which went along well with the Sister Theresa story. Carl pushed past Mriy and rummaged through the rest. A children’s datapad, well scuffed from use. Several articles of women’s clothing, all drab and conservative, even the undergarments. A silver box with a few pieces of costume jewelry. Two school uniforms. A tiny case containing toiletries.
“Airlock,” Carl said.
“But wait, this is all her stuff, isn’t it?” Roddy asked.
“She’s on the run with that boy of hers. She’s Esper, he’s Adam, and there was never a priestess on board. If anyone asks, the boy is her half brother; I’ll work out some details if he needs a better cover later.”
Mriy pointed to the bible. “Bad business defiling a holy book. I want no part.”
Carl pursed his lips and stared down at the book, lying atop the sloppily repacked belongings. The fake gold lettering stared up at him accusingly. The synthetic leather cover was worn from handling; someone had loved that book. He held it up and riffled through to see if anything fell out. The dingy grey paper held no secrets trapped between pages.
It was temping to throw all the problems away at a go. Carl’s hand twitched toward the footlocker, to throw it back. “Here, take it back to your quarters if you don’t want the bad mojo.” He pressed the book into Mriy’s hands. “I sent Esper to shower before coming to pick out new clothes from the heap here. You’ve got ‘til she gets out to hide it. Roddy, I’ll give you a hand venting this thing to vacuum.”
He pointed to each of them, his best captain’s glare in his eyes. “Not a word of this. She already mourned this junk once already. No point getting her hopes up, just to smash them. It’s gotta go.”
“What do I do with this?” Mriy asked, turning the book over in her hands. “I barely read ape.”
“Stow it or give it to Mort when Esper’s not around. Mort loves books.”
# # #
The cockpit always had the best view, even when there was no view to be had. The Black Ocean went out to infinity, but the eye made you think that the stars were right there just out of arm’s reach. Between star systems there was nothing. Lots and lots of nothing. There was more nothing than all the something in the galaxy combined. And it was beautiful. Peaceful.
The inside of the cockpit, however, was anything but. A faint rush from the air circulator never let it get completely silent. Indicator lights demanded attention, even when they had nothing important to show. The navigation display showed an icon representing the Mobius surrounded on all sides by void, even with the scale set to maximum; a line still spun around though, constantly updating the lack of anything to see. Jazz poured softly from the speakers. Tanny slouched in the pilot’s chair, her feet up on the console, a datapad in hand.
Carl crept up under cover of a Miles Davis piece he could not put a name to. He peered over the pilot’s seat and read the datapad Tanny held. He took one more quiet step to the side and threw himself into the copilot’s chair, slumping with his legs over the arm. “A hundred men you should never date?” he asked, quoting the article title from the datapad. “How many times am I in there?”
“You keep those hands of yours off the controls or I’ll break your wrists,” Tanny replied, eyes wide and brow low. Carl held up his hands in the classic bank robbery victim pose. “What do you want?”
“I’m still sorry about Chip.”
That took the edge off Tanny. She settled back into her seat and flicked the datapad off. “I’ll write something to his folks tomorrow. Not like they have any reason to be expecting anything.”
“I can have Mriy come up and watch the void for you, if you’d rather take the night off.”
“Someone’s gotta cover Chip’s shift,” said Tanny. “Might as well be me.”
“I wanted to talk to you about the priestess we picked up.”
“Oh yeah, the prom queen of Uncanny Valley.”
“I’m trying to ignore that, but she does sort of have a weird look to her. Almost familiar.”
“Did your sisters ever collect dolls?” Tanny asked.
“Holy shit!” said Carl. He slapped a hand gently against his forehead. “Susie Sunshine. Yeah, Jamie collected those. She’s a dead ringer.”
“Actually it was the Vicky Valentine doll I was thinking. Same collection though. I used to collect those.”
“So what, we’ve got a doll fanatic aboard?”
Tanny’s expression soured. “Nah, those were a while back. I was on the young side to still be playing with those, and I bet I’ve got eight or ten years on that priestess.” Tanny had never been shy about her age�
��or anything much, really. Carl always liked that about her. “It’s probably her mother.”
Carl’s nose wrinkled as his brow scrunched. “That’s sick. How many times you think she had to go under, to look like that?”
Pieces. That was why Carl liked talking to people. No one figured out a whole puzzle on his own, at least not someone like Carl. Different people picked up on different things. It helped being able to tell who was full of shit and who was telling it straight, but talk to enough people and you can get to the bottom of almost anything.
Tanny shrugged. “I’m no vanity surgeon. A dozen, twenty, a hundred? More than she could stomach is a good bet.”
“Shitty childhood, runs off to join the church?” Carl asked. Tanny nodded. “Might explain why she took the boy.”
“They’re not related, are they?”
“Nope, just one lost soul rescuing another.”
# # #
A torrent of water washed over Carl’s bare skin. It was tepid, just warm enough not to make him shiver. Still, it felt good to wash away the grime from helping Roddy in the cargo bay. He opened his mouth and gargled the water that filled it. There was a metallic aftertaste when he spat it into the shower drain—the reprocessor was just one more thing for Roddy to fix.
From outside the shower, Carl heard the muffled sound of the ship-wide comm. He reached for the controls and shut off the shower flow. “Carl? CARL? Get your ass up here, pronto!” Tanny shouted over the speakers.
Carl hustled through the ship with a towel around his waist, his hair dripping and his bare feet slapping against the steel deck plates.
“Go find out what’s she blathering about,” Mort said from his seat on the couch in the common room. Mriy glanced up from the game of Death Arena she was playing against Adam, and the boy did not even flinch from the holovid screen.
Esper poked her head up from the stairwell to Chip’s old quarters. “What’s going on?” Her cheeks were flushed, and she was short of breath.
Carl did not stop to answer, but continued along the short corridor and up to the cockpit, one hand holding his towel closed.
“What’s wrong?” he asked Tanny when he opened the cockpit door.
“Look.” She pointed to the console.
It was a text-only communique: UNIDENTIFIED VESSEL, POWER DOWN AND PREPARE TO BE BOARDED. ARGO AUTHORITY: (ENV) TALLY-HO.
“What should I say?” she asked after a pause to let Carl process the message. She leaned away from him. “And stop dripping on me.”
“Full stop. Transmit our coordinates,” Carl replied. “Not like we’ve got anything to hide. Rather let them rummage around than risk finding they’ve started outfitting customs ships with top-line engines.”
“You sure we’re clean?” Tanny asked. “Like, Navy inspection clean?”
Carl furrowed his brow and ran his fingers through his dripping hair. “Mort’s got our unmentionables sealed up tight. We’ve got legit salvage in the hold …”
“She means me,” said Esper from the corridor just outside the cockpit. She had changed into clothes from the salvage pile in the cargo hold. Baggy black pants brushed the floor, held in place by a wide belt. A sleeveless pink blouse covered her to the neck but left her midriff exposed. At a glance, Carl could not tell if she wore her pendant beneath it, but she looked nothing like a priestess.
“You hotter than you let on?” Carl asked. “What happened to that story about a rescue?”
“The boy’s not mine. Even if Harmony Bay didn’t report Adam kidnapped, we can’t explain why we have him. He’s got parents on Mars.”
“Your call,” Tanny said, her hands hovering over the controls.
Carl looked Esper in the eye. She was scared; that much was plain. But what did it mean? Was she concerned for her own skin, the boy, or something else she failed to mention? “Send it,” he said, nodding to Tanny. “Wait. On second thought, open a comm.”
“Might take a minute. Who knows how far they are behind us? They’re not even in sensor range.”
Carl ran a hand over the stubble on his face, options whirring in his head. He nodded absently. “You,” he said, pointing to Esper, “are the only survivor of that wreck. We pulled you out during the salvage after your escape pod jammed, except you were the only one in it. Got that?”
“I think so.”
“I want you to believe that’s what happened. I’ll try to keep them from asking you too many questions; you just had a major shock after all. But if they do, you’ve gotta keep them off Adam’s trail. Now go back and tell Mort to stash Adam in his quarters. Clean out Chip’s bunk and take anything Adam touched and send it with Mort, too. Go.”
Esper nodded and hurried back down the corridor.
Tanny closed her eyes and shook her head. “You never change.”
“The easy way’s never the best one. Once you start running from every little thing, you can’t ever stop.”
The console beeped. Tanny keyed the comm. “Unidentified ship, this is Earth Navy Vessel Tally-ho. Coordinates received. Hold position and prepare for customs inspection per ARGO transportation code 97312.3.1.” The voice was smooth and professional, as bland an Earth accent as you could get, shy of a computer.
Carl smiled. There was something familiar about that voice. He reached for the button to open the mic. Tanny slapped his hand away. He reached around her on the other side, and she slapped his hand again. “Stop that.”
“Get out of my cockpit and dry off.”
“Just … key it for me, then. Would you?”
Tanny pursed her lips, but held down the button as requested. “Tally-ho, this is Mobius. Your signal checks out. Can’t be too careful this far out in the Black Ocean. You won’t get any trouble out of us. Thanks for keeping the borderlands safe. Mobius out.” He nodded to Tanny and she closed the comm.
“What?”
“What what?”
“That grin.”
“I thought you liked surprises,” said Carl. He slicked back his dripping hair and flicked droplets of water in Tanny’s direction as he left the cockpit.
“I hate surprises,” she called after him. “You know that.”
# # #
Carl came up the steps from his quarters two at a time, bending in half at the waist to keep from hitting his head on the ceiling of the narrow stairwell. He was dried and dressed, wearing denims and his battered leather jacket. Once he reached the common room, he had the overhead clearance to pull on an equally battered old Earth Navy dress cap. He stopped and blinked to take in the scene before him.
“The hell’s all this?” he asked. Esper sat at the edge of one of the dinner table chairs, back straight and hands clasped as if they were keeping each other from running away screaming. Mriy was lying spread full length on the couch, asleep to all appearances, her bare feet twitching. On the kitchen counter, Roddy was four-fisting cans of Earth’s Preferred. The tables in the kitchen and rec areas of the common room were both arrayed with the personal weapons the crew kept on board, from blades to blasters—it was the only thing Carl could see that was right about the picture.
“What?” Esper asked, jerking her head around at the sound of his voice.
“I asked you all to be ready when they got here,” said Carl, spreading his arms.
Roddy belched. “You expect me to be civil while I’m sober?”
“Relaxed. Amiable. Helpful. What I see is scared shitless, sleeping, and half-drunk.” He grabbed two of the beers away from Roddy. He plunked one of them down on the table by Esper, between a stun rifle and one of Mriy’s bone dueling knives. “Drink up.”
“But I don’t—”
“Can it,” said Carl. “And I mean can it. You can’t be tight as an E-string when the inspection crew gets here.”
He took the second beer over to Mriy and held the can as if to pour it over her face as she lay snoring softly. There was no flinch; she really was asleep. Much as he hated ever waking her, he took a swig of the beer himself and kicke
d the couch. Mriy stirred and opened one eye in a squint.
“They here yet?” Mriy asked. She yawned, revealing a mouth full of fangs the size of Carl’s fingers—and stinking of rotted taru.
“Tanny’s feeding them candy glass down in the hold,” Roddy replied. He took a chug of his beer. “They’ve Navy though, so there’s only so long she’s gonna be able to put up a smiley for them.”
“We had candy left?” Carl asked.
“Hell, no,” Roddy replied. “Figurative … you know.”
Hearing footsteps coming up from below, Carl threw himself against the nearest wall, feigning a casual slouch. He pulled his navy cap low and crossed his arms. A grin worked itself onto his face, but he fought it back and relaxed his facial muscles before the footsteps reached the common room.
“Which one of you is captain of this ship?” The navy officer who spoke was soft and doughy, with a crisp navy blue uniform making his build appear solid rather than sloppy. He carried a datapad and wore a blaster sidearm at his hip. He scanned the room with professional annoyance.
“Hey, Dingo? What’re you up to out past nowhere? They punish you for something?” Carl asked.
The navy officer’s eyes narrowed. “Who the hell are—?“ Carl pushed up the brim of his cap and smiled. “Blackjack, you bastard! How’ve you been? Wait, don’t answer that; must be shitty if you’re flying this heap of castoff parts.”
“Hey, don’t talk about my crew like that,” Carl replied with indignation. He addressed the crew scattered around the room, including Tanny, who lingered in the doorway. “This is an old buddy of mine, Ted Wellington. He used to be a half decent fighter pilot before he put on twenty kilos and those scrambled eggs on his collar.”
“Hey, I outrank you now, hotshot,” Wellington replied.
“I promoted myself to captain when I bought Mobius,” Carl replied.
Wellington snorted. “You retired as a Lieutenant Commander though, and that’s what really counts. You can call yourself emperor of this tub for all I care.”