by J. S. Morin
“Wait, you told them we were a chop-ship?” Tanny asked.
“That explains how they ID’ed us, at least,” Carl said, nodding to himself. “Someone in one of those stores did some digging and found a non-standard turtledove that landed recently. Not exactly astral cartography. It’s beside the point now, anyway. Someone wants to hire us.”
“I figured that much from your half of the conversation,” Tanny said. “What’s the job?”
“Passenger transport,” Carl replied. “Pickup is in-system on Drei, one of Tau Ceti VII’s moons. Drop-off details to be provided in person.”
“That’s a rough neighborhood,” Tanny said.
“I imagine that’s why they wanted someone like us.”
“Hold on a minute,” Esper said. “Since it seems to be something we need to ask around here, who are we transporting? We running slaves, kidnapped witnesses, escaped inmates … am I getting warm?” After the incident at the Gologlex Menagerie, she felt the need to get the unpleasantries out in the open up front.
“It was the guy on the comm,” Carl said. “Can’t promise he hasn’t escaped from anywhere, but he gave me an ID to run a background on him. Either he’s clean or has a nice forged ID.”
“Who’s gonna run that background?” Roddy asked. By his tone, it wasn’t going to be him.
Carl just shrugged. “Wasn’t going to bother. Chip might have cracked a false ID, but no one here can do better than taking whatever bait he left us. I’ll dig up the basics on the omni, just to see what he looks like.”
Mort cleared his throat. “Where’s he going to sleep?”
“Shit,” Carl muttered as he threw his head back against the couch cushions.
# # #
Tau Ceti VII had three moons, all terraformed: Einer, Zwei, and Drei; none was the sort of place that drew vacationers from far-flung systems. It was a hazard of being one of the first systems humans colonized; terramancers were more than willing to stick close to home and keep making every orbital body habitable, rather than traipse across the galaxy. Despite its potato-like shape, Drei was a warren of cities connected by tramway tunnels, clinging to a breathable atmosphere.
All the landing bays were of Port-of-St.Paul enclosed, which was just as well, because the air quality on the moon was notoriously rough on non-natives. As Carl stepped off the cargo ramp, he stumbled in the gravity change. Here and there you’d find an inhabited world with as much as a 10 percent variance from Earth’s gravity, but moons threw a lot of those rules out the airlock. Drei had less than half of Earth Standard, and every organ in Carl’s body shifted under the new, lesser pull.
“I hate that,” he muttered. “Why can’t you people just fix that shit when these moons get terraformed?”
Mort snorted. He strode past the bounding Carl as if the moon’s gravity wasn’t affecting him any differently. “Just ignore it. Besides, they built this place centuries ago. I doubt the locals would take kindly to anyone mucking about with their little worldlet. Locals are funny like that. Consistent too. Just about anything you’d like to fix is some sort of offense. Nasty buggers, locals.”
“No, Kubu,” Tanny said, holding the dog at bay. “Stay.” Kubu was having no part of being left behind, trying to force his way past Tanny to follow Carl.
Carl turned back, regretting the sudden motion while his mind and body were still struggling to assimilate to the gravity shift. “Maybe you should just stay on board. It’s not like we can’t handle this ourselves. Besides, Kubu might get into just about anything.”
“I’m not a dog-sitter,” Tanny snapped, despite having her arm wrapped around Kubu’s chest in a wrestling hold.
“Hey, he’s your responsibility.”
Tanny fumed, but Roddy hit the release to raise the cargo ramp. Ex-wife, mechanic, and dog all disappeared from view.
“The dark beast shall be the death of us all,” Mort said, his voice dry and sepulchral.
Carl shied away from him. “Was that supposed to be some sort of prophecy?”
Mort just snickered, his shoulders shaking gently. “Nah, I imagine the overgrown slipper-chewer will grow out of it. Tanny’s just in for a rough go of it in the meantime.”
“I didn’t know you knew anything about dogs.”
“What’s to know? Simplest creatures on Earth. Probably simplest creatures on whatever planet Kubu’s from. Not a bit of guile or malice in them.”
“Well, odds are this guy we’re meeting has plenty of both,” Carl said. They walked from the hangar area into the public section of the spaceport. There were the usual shops and cafés, as if someone designing a spaceport figured anyone new planetside needed a memento shirt or a cup of overpriced coffee. The central hub of the plaza featured a decorative fountain with sprays and jets of water that drifted in the low gravity to catch offworlders’ attention.
“What kind of a name is that, anyway? Bryce Brisson?” Mort asked. “It has to be a fake.”
“Could be,” Carl agreed. “Or maybe his parents just hated him. Didn’t do him any favors in life, if any of that bio is real. He’s done time—nothing major. A couple cons, a hold-up, shit that’d get you dusted on Earth but only a couple years’ cold time in the borderlands.”
“Wash the suds off the notion that any of that poppycock is worth a damn,” Mort said. “Want to know if a man’s a phony? Look him in the eye. All a matter of observation and a keen understanding of the mind.”
“Try me,” Carl said.
“Anyone else.”
“Well, we’re going to be in for a lot more keen looks into guy’s eyes if we don’t find another tech juggler,” Carl said. “I’ve been thinking of asking Esper to take a course over the omni.”
“Whoa there, cowboy,” Mort said, holding up both hands and waggling them. “I like that girl. Got a head between those ears of hers. In all the time you’ve had the Mobius, we haven’t kept anyone in that job who hasn’t either come to a bad end or stuck a knife in us when time came to share the spoils of our own cleverness.”
Carl sighed. It was an old argument, but he pulled on his verbal boxing gloves once again. “It’s all a matter of coincidence. There’s nothing to say Esper will have anything bad happen to her just because she knows how to wrangle a computer core or slog through the muck in the back alleys of omni. And can you honestly picture her turning on us? She won’t even fire a blaster at a target dummy that’s shaped like a human.”
“We’re damn fools if we let her,” Mort replied. “Time and again the universe tells us we’re not supposed to muck around with that garbage. How many times do you have to burn your hand to stop sticking it in the fire?”
“Maybe this Bryce guy will be a computer Einstein,” Carl said. “We can have him run a check on his own fake ID.”
Mort sighed. “You’re doing that mocking little sing-song thing again. I win the argument.”
“Fuck you and your argument rules! The universe is not trying to send me a personal message about who I can hire for my crew.”
Mort grunted. “Where are we supposed to find this mystery passenger?” The two of them passed the ChuggaGuzzle that marked the end of the shopping area. Overhead signage pointed out various outlets into the surrounding city of Tangiers Gamma.
“I wanted to scout this place out for a good meet-up spot and send him a comm.” Carl took a moment to glance at his options and headed in the direction of the Galveston District. The subheading mentioned industrial processing, ore refinery, and freight transfer—not the sort of place many people would go by accident.
“So, we’re just wandering?”
Carl took a bounding step and turned in mid-air to face Mort. “For now.”
Mort glared sidelong at Carl, and might have raised some objection, had not someone beaten him to it. “Sir, if you’ll step aside please,” a helmet-muffled voice addressed Carl.
Two uniformed security officers separated themselves from the crowd and barred Carl and Mort’s path. Behind the helms, they probably
bore distinguishing features, but with the darkened visors, gloved hands, and regulation law-enforcement physique, it was impossible to tell one from the other.
“Sorry fellas; there must be some mistake,” Carl said with an easy smile. It was a reflex. He hadn’t given any thought to the response. “We just got here.”
“Get back to us in an hour, maybe two if we’re slow,” Mort added. That was when Carl knew the wizard was thinking along with him. They weren’t going quietly.
The security officer tapped a finger on the side of his visor. “You are Captain Bradley Carlin Ramsey of the Earth-registered ship Mobius. There is a warrant for your arrest for an incident that took place on Orion Station Echo Nine. Please place your hands on your head.”
Carl blinked in disbelief. His first instinct had been that Bryce Brisson had set him up. But this was legit. Someone with too much time on his hands had put together enough pieces to dump the mayhem on Echo Nine at his feet. The paltry blaster pistols in the officers’ hands had every right to be aimed his way. From his vantage, Carl couldn’t tell whether they were set to stun. If Mort wasn’t quick, that little detail might make all the difference. Trusting that this wasn’t a “he was reaching for a weapon” setup, Carl complied. The stream of factory workers and freight handlers that had filled the corridor a minute earlier dispersed with guilty haste, as if they all wanted to dissociate themselves from whatever Carl had done.
“I’m sure we can work something—”
There was a minor tremor in the air, and a sound like a faulty compressor coil just before it burnt out. One of the security guards dropped to the floor like dead weight. The tremor and sound repeated, and this time Carl saw the blue of the stun bolt just as it struck the second guard and sent him limply to the ground as well.
The man with the stun pistol in his hand looked familiar, just like his flatpic on the omni. Bryce Brisson wore a comm headset with the mic flipped away from his face, and carried a travel pack over one shoulder. “I’d hoped to meet under less urgent circumstances, but we can work out a payment once we’re off this rock.”
“Um, thanks,” Carl said, his fingers still laced together, resting on his head.
“This is our fare?” Mort asked.
“You boys always this slow?” Bryce asked, waving the stun pistol in a beckoning gesture toward the hangars. “We’ve gotta get out of here.”
Carl opened his mouth. Words were about to come out—something protesting the presumption on the part of one Bryce Brisson, prospective passenger. But there were two stunned security officers on the ground at his feet, and enough witnesses that there was a good chance one might decide he didn’t have amnesia and ID Carl and Mort. The words on the tip of Carl’s tongue transformed. “We’ve got to stash these guys.”
“We can shove them in there,” Mort said, pointing to a nearby door labeled “Grade Epsilon Clearance Required.”
“Hacking that will take more time than we’ve—” Bryce began, but he stopped himself mid-sentence. Mort had already made his way to the door. With none of the wizardly trappings of spellcasting, he simply jammed a finger into the key-card reader. The metal of the device glowed red as Mort’s finger pushed through, and the innards crackled and sparked in their death throes. The door popped open.
“Give me a hand,” Bryce said to Carl, reaching down to grab hold of one of the security guards. Before he could reach the limp form, both guards slid along the floor, pulled by an unseen force.
“No time for mucking around with grunt work,” Mort said. “And since we’re past the point of subtlety …” He muttered something guttural and pointed a finger down the corridor and upward. A gout of flame spilled forth from empty air, setting off alarms and sending the remaining bystanders scattering.
“Holy shit,” Bryce said, throwing an arm up to shield his face.
“You’re with us, I guess,” Carl said. “Come on.”
The run was awkward in the low gravity. Carl bounded along with Bryce as his heels. Mort outpaced them, taking advantage of being able selectively ignore the effects of gravity on his creaky old carcass.
“Can you call ahead to your ship?” Bryce asked, huffing as he ran.
Carl broke stride to fish his comm from his jacket pocket. He hit the transmit button, but the device failed to respond. “Nope,” he replied. “Mort blew my comm with his little tantrum.”
“You should have mentioned wanting to call the ship sooner,” Mort said.
“Half the responders in the city are going to be heading this way to deal with that fire,” Bryce said. “I was counting on us having a few minutes’ head start before anyone knew what was going on.”
“We still … have it,” Carl replied, beginning to feel the effects of a sedentary life aboard ship. The run was wearing on him already. A hover-shuttle headed their way bearing four red-garbed emergency personnel in full environmental protective gear, faces hidden behind breather helmets. “Fire! Back … that way!” Carl shouted to them, pointing the direction they had come from. As soon as they were past, he slowed to a walk, then stopped. “Hold up. They’re dealing with a fire, not us. Play this cool and we get back to the Mobius like nothing happened.”
Mort slowed to match his pace. “Good enough for me. I’m too old for shit like this. What do you think they’ll have done to keep us from flying off?”
“Probably a no-fly order to traffic control,” Carl replied, still breathing heavily. “There’s nothing between us and the Black Ocean, though; this is a moon, not a sealed station. We’re likely to get patrol craft after us.”
They entered the plaza, which looked like a different world with the chaos of commerce and idle snacking replaced by the chaos of fire response teams coming and everyone else fleeing for cover.
“Leave that to me,” Bryce replied. “I’ve got claws in local computer systems. I can get them seeing false images on their sensors, enough to throw them off for an escape.”
Oh, really? Carl remembered Chip saying something like that once. It had worked, but Carl had written off having that sort of technical help on board since Chip’s death. Maybe this Bryce was worth more than just a paying fare. “Bryce, you carrying your fare in that pack by any chance?”
“Captain Ramsey, I’m carrying all my worldly possessions in this pack,” Bryce replied.
“Good, because we still have to work out a payment for this trip of yours.”
“Maybe now’s not the best time to be negotiating,” Bryce said.
“Look,” Carl said. “We’re about five minutes—maybe six—from blasting off this rock with a whole freighter of trouble left in our wake. If you don’t want to be the one to clean it up, I think you’re going to take whatever I offer.”
“You’re bluffing,” Bryce said. “You wouldn’t risk having half the planetary defense force after you.”
“If there’s one thing my crew can tell you: I never know when to back off a bluff. Your fare is that pack of yours and everything in it, and I’m guessing it’s still not going to cover the fallout from this shit supernova.”
“Anyone ever tell you you’re an ass?” Bryce asked. When Carl just grinned in reply, he relented. “Deal.”
# # #
The Mobius was still waiting for them when they got to the hangar. All along the retreat, Carl had a nagging worry that there would be an armed security unit waiting there for him, with an impounded ship and his crew already taken into custody. The cargo bay door lowered as they approached, and Roddy gave the fleeing trio a wave.
“Didn’t expect you guys back so soon,” he shouted across the hangar bay. “This our guy?”
“Fire up the engines,” Carl called back. “Comm Tanny and tell her if she’s not in the cockpit by the time I get there, I’m flying.”
“We in some kind of—”
“NOW!”
“Sure thing, boss-man,” Roddy replied. He hit the comm panel by the cargo bay door. Carl couldn’t hear what he said, but Roddy held up his hands in a placating
gesture that was lost on Tanny at the other end of the conversation. Apparently Carl’s impromptu departure was an inconvenience.
A minute later, Carl, Mort, and Bryce were in the common room. Mort collapsed onto the couch, while Bryce stood with one hand on the strap of his pack, looking lost. “Where can I get a good signal?”
“Cockpit,” Carl replied. “With me. Mort, you get ready to take us astral.”
“Wait … the wizard’s doing it?” Bryce asked with a rising note of panic. “No offense, but I assumed you people used a star drive. I didn’t sign on for—”
“I didn’t sign on for any of this,” Carl snapped. There was a telltale shift in the feel of the floor beneath his feet. The subtle shift in engine vibration meant that they had just cleared the ground. “We’re past the point of leaving you behind. So suck it up and trust us to get you out of here … our way.”
Carl strode down the corridor to the cockpit. En route they passed the converted conference room. The door was open, and Esper was waiting inside, but there was no time for her just then. “Carl, what’s—” she began, but Carl was already past the doorway and she let the question drop.
“Tanny, what’ve we got?” Carl asked as he leaned over the co-pilot’s seat.
“How about you tell me that?” Tanny sniped back. “Where are we even heading?”
“They were waiting for us with a warrant,” Carl replied. “Just plot us a course anywhere extra-solar. We’ll worry about navigation once we’re astral. Oh, and watch out for planetary security. By the way, this is Bryce. Bryce, Tanny. Tanny, Bryce Brisson.”
“Where can I interface?” Bryce asked.
Carl stepped aside and allowed Bryce into the co-pilot’s seat. “Work it.”
“What’s he—?”
Carl didn’t let Tanny finish. “He’s putting enough ships on the planetary sensor net that we can slip away in the confusion. I guess he’s good at that sort of thing.”
Bryce fished a device from his pack that looked like a miniature computer core. He took a cable that sprouted from one end of it and scanned the ship’s main console until he found a matching port. “Give me a few seconds to get connected, and … what the …?” He gave the portable core a firm whack and squinted at the display. “It’s dead.”