Mission Pack 1: Missions 1-4 (Black Ocean Mission Pack)

by J. S. Morin

  “So that’s what you see? A tweaker on a crash?” Fuck Esper. Even when she was trying to act like she grew up tough, she came across like a … well, like a priestess.

  “Everyone’s heard about the stuff they give marines. It doesn’t take a xenogeneticist to figure out you kept taking it. You can pass it off as lingering effects of the stuff you took while you were in, making you stronger and tougher than everyone. But if you’re reacting like this to metabolic healing, and sweet, dopey Kubu turned into Cerberus all of a sudden. Come on, I’m not an idiot.”

  Tanny swallowed. “No, I guess you’re not.” She let her head loll back against the headrest and closed her eyes.

  “You don’t have to show me how to navigate if you don’t want to,” Esper said. “But I’ll stay right here, in case you need me.”

  # # #

  “Bring us to a halt at the edge of the system,” Carl said, resting a hand on the back of the pilot’s chair. His stomach was undecided between gnawing hunger and wanting to eject the huckleberry and salami sandwich that was the only thing he’d eaten in the past eighteen hours.

  Tanny turned and looked up with a question in her eyes. For a split-second, Carl thought it might stay there, but he was disappointed yet again. “What for? It’ll take days to cross the system in real-space.” There was an edge in her voice, and Carl knew he was walking across springtime ice on a sunny day. Whatever she was feeling from the lack of her stash, Tanny was in a bad way—pale and glistening with sweat on her brow even in the cool 16°C cockpit.

  “Yeah, we could blow by them and they’d never see us,” Carl agreed. “But this is the Poet Fleet’s turf, and I want to play nice. We’ll hail a patrol ship and say ‘hi.’ They’ve got intra-system astral gates we can use after that.”

  “Mort’ll be pissed.”

  “Mort’s a big boy,” Carl said. “Besides, everyone’ll be fine once we get the holo-projector replaced.”

  Tanny snorted. “Just like that, huh? With what money?”

  Carl took a casual step back and out of Tanny’s reach. Her attention was back on the ship’s controls, so he didn’t try to hide his grin. “I figure Janice can spot us.”

  “Janice …? Janice who?” Tanny’s voice held a note of slow menace.

  “Janice Rucker,” Carl said. “You know, Jay and Carly’s oldest. Seriously, I keep better track of your family than you do. Maybe I can make you a chart or—”

  “What’s Janice doing out here?”

  “Hiring Bryce, hopefully.”

  “What?”

  “Bryce wants a job working for her,” Carl said. He shrugged even though Tanny wasn’t looking his way. He explained Bryce’s plan, and rehashed Mort and Roddy’s interrogation of their passenger and his responses. He skipped the part where he implied he might seduce her cousin, but otherwise left nothing out.

  “I don’t like it,” Tanny declared at the end of Carl’s story. “Seems too polished. How’s this penny-ante data hustler know so much? And if he did, why’s he pulling out the overdrive to work for Janice of all people? You’d think anyone with three working brain cells would be trying to get off her crew, not on it.”

  “I don’t think she’s working a crew anymore,” Carl replied. “Your dad doesn’t like things getting too far out of his sight. This is her own gig, being her own boss.”

  “You think that’s going to make her cupcakes and taffy to work for? That hulking she-beast’s probably going to rip people’s hearts out with her bare hands when they piss her off.”

  “Probably good money in it, though,” Carl said, stuffing his hands in his pockets.

  “Don’t you even…” Tanny said. “Didn’t you hear a word I said?”

  Tanny slowed the ship to a stop. The Mobius was at the outer limits of the Freeride System. They were too deep in the astral to pick up anything on sensors—far too deep—but the concealment worked both ways. Nothing should have been traveling this far down; Mort had described the Mobius as an elephant walking a tightrope, but Carl figured anyone would be able to see that. Mort had tried changing to a non elephant-centric metaphor, but Carl had admitted that he really didn’t care, so long as Mort didn’t get them stuck in a purple haze again.

  “Janny isn’t a—”

  “Janice,” Tanny insisted.

  “—isn’t a problem at the moment. We’ve still got to deal with the pirates.” Carl keyed the intra-ship comm. “OK, Mort. Set us back in real-space, nice and gentle.”

  A shout echoed through the corridor from the common room. “Don’t tell me my business!”

  Carl double-checked to make sure the comm was off. “Geez, who’d have thought the fridge was the key to everyone’s mood on this ship,” he said to Tanny. Then he caught a glimpse of the bloodshot glare she was giving him. “Present company excluded, of course. Don’t worry. Recitol might be tough to find out here, but you can bet the rest is for sale.”

  “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Tanny asked with venom.

  He shouldn’t have mentioned the Recitol. He knew it even as he’d said it. Those pills had been at the center of more arguments between them than any subject except for who should fly the ship. “Just being realistic. Farther you get from Sol, the scarcer it gets.”

  The gray of astral space darkened into the familiar Black Ocean. Stars perked up against the backdrop of the void, and a tiny speck of yellow light was the Freeride System’s sun, Syrbaat—or Syerbat, whichever. Carl could never keep it straight which was a star system and which a cheap brand of recreational land-cruisers. The cosmos was not the only thing to be seen; Tanny had dropped them out at an unofficial checkpoint, a place in-the-know spacers could pay their respects to the Poet Fleet and her commander before venturing into the core of the system. A small fuel depot, a pirate-owned astral gate, and a lone patrol ship waited for them. Just by stopping there, the Mobius had shown that they weren’t rubes blundering in unawares.

  “Weapons lock!” Tanny shouted.

  “Shields!” Carl snapped, but Tanny was already lunging for the shield controls.

  “Vessel Mobius, power down and prepare for scan,” a voice ordered over the comm.

  Carl reached down and hit the button to reply. “Hey there, this is Carl Ramsey, captain of the Mobius. No problemo. Powering down. Just… don’t shoot us, OK?” Some hasty gesturing ensued, and Tanny shut down the ship’s engines and shield generator. Their weapons were already offline, and no one meant life support when they told you to shut everything down. It was just one of those quirks of ship-to-ship communication.

  “This is Commander Anabel Sanders of the We Are Pariahs Because We Speak Unpleasant Truths. How were you able to evade our astral sensors?”

  “Shoot, I’d have to know a lot more about astral sensors to answer that,” Carl replied. “We’re a bit non-standard in the star-drive department though, so that might explain things. Didn’t mean to spook you. I mean, we stopped at your checkpoint and all.”

  “Yes, you did. What is your destination?”

  “Third planet. I forget the local name,” Carl replied.

  “Sybaat III is called Carousel,” Commander Anabel replied. “Your business there?”

  “Passenger drop off.”

  “Length of stay?”

  “Until we find a job that pays us to go somewhere else.”

  “Who can vouch for your ship?”

  “Shit,” Carl said. “I’ve been here before. Doesn’t that count?”

  “New security measures. Your ship will be limited to high-security docking if you don’t have a sponsor.”

  “Janice Rucker,” Carl replied. Tanny whirled in her seat before he could wipe the grin from his face.

  “What philosophers do you follow?”

  “Pardon?”

  “For example, I follow the tenets of Bushido, and the writings of Nietzsche. Whose philosophies guide you?”

  Carl scratched his head. “I don’t get that one often, I gotta say. I guess Miller and Stills. I’m a c
omplicated guy, though. I could list off a few dozen, mood by mood. Is there a wrong answer to this?”

  “Not as such. I just like knowing whom I’m allowing through. I’m not familiar with either a Miller or Stills though.”

  “That’s a shame,” Carl said. “I can transmit copies of their seminal works.”

  There was a brief silence on the comm. “You just had to do that,” Tanny whispered, as if the ship would transmit without an open comm if she spoke in a normal voice.

  “Very well, Mobius, proceed to the gate. Refrain from using any onboard star-drive systems, regulation or otherwise. I look forward to perusing the works of your philosophers.”

  “See?”

  “They’re as fucked up as you are,” Tanny muttered as she powered up the engines and set a course for the Poet Fleet’s astral gate.

  # # #

  The trip through the Poet Fleet’s astral gate was uneventful. It was set to 1.5 astral depth, just to keep it separate from the traffic of ships operating under their own star-drives. In the whole two-hour slog through the Freeride System, they only passed two other vessels, one a Saddlebag-class trader broadcasting no ID, the other an interdictor like the We Are Pariahs Because We Speak Unpleasant Truths. Its name was There Is No Soap to Cleanse the Soul, and was probably set to relieve the We Are Pariahs Because We Speak Unpleasant Truths on gate-guard duty. Carl tried to condense the names into something that rolled off the tongue a little easier, but after two hours, all he had was the acronym W.A.P.B.W.S.U.T., with no pronunciation he could manage. TINSTCTS started off with some promise, but ran smack into a reinforced carbon-laminate hull midway through.

  Carousel was what most travelers referred to as one of “the dregs.” It wasn’t an Earth-like, hadn’t been terraformed, but was still habitable—at least at the tropics. Ice caps covered nearly a quarter of the planet, and much of the rest was in a state of near-permanent winter. The equatorial belt hovered in the 5-15°C range, with little seasonal variance, and that was where Carousel’s residents clustered.

  The Mobius arrived at a communal landing field outside the town of Calliope, located on the horse-shaped landmass (if you squinted just right, or were drunk, or both) that inspired Carousel’s name. It was a barren, dry patch of land, the native wild grasses trampled under feet and landing gear of countless interstellar visitors. Those grasses got crushed down by a few more of each as the Mobius set down and the crew disembarked.

  “Back in the cold, dry armpit of the galaxy,” Roddy said, the last one off the ship. He took a huge, audible breath and let it out. “And smell that de-icer and coal soot.”

  “Hey, coal’s cheap and local,” Tanny snapped. “You don’t like it, you can crawl back inside.” She climbed into the hover-cruiser the Mobius had stolen from the Gologlex Menagerie, shoving Carl out of the driver’s seat.

  “Thanks, but no thanks,” Roddy replied. “I’m finding a bar with a three-meter holovid and an omni link that can get ARGO Athletic Broadcast, and I’m not crawling out until I’m seeing double.”

  “You coming, Paycheck?” Tanny called to Bryce.

  “I thought I’d head into town, look for a solid data terminal,” Bryce said. “You know, get started on my end of the deal.”

  “Nope,” Carl said. “You’re with us. Me and Tanny talked it over, and we figured we’d trust you on your end. You’re meeting Janice Rucker in about …” Carl paused to check the chrono on Tanny’s wrist “… about twenty-eight minutes.”

  They had talked it over, but it hadn’t been some grand agreement. Carl had wanted to trust Bryce just enough to allow him access to a data terminal unsupervised. Tanny didn’t even want that much. Janice and her crew were getting the full story, and Bryce was using a hook-up from their local base of operations. The details would get worked out later, since the comm call had only wrapped up while they were on approach to the surface. Carl negotiated with Tanny’s nephew Zack, who through the wonders of sprawling, multi-generational families, was two years older than her.

  She took the hover-cruiser along the outskirts of Calliope. The buildings were dingy, utilitarian, mostly pre-fab. Aside from places with prominent signage, it was hard to tell corporate offices from apartment complexes, and factories only stood out by virtue of the chemical tanks and smokestacks that clung to them like parasites.

  # # #

  The thought of seeing Janice again dredged up old memories. There was the time they had gone to Luna together for a week with Aunt Cerise and had been forced to share a room. Janice had spiked her shampoo with day-glow dye, the same stuff used for construction work to mark off work sites. She had retaliated by adding UV-cured epoxy to Janice’s hair gel; it had solidified seconds after she stepped outdoors. Years later, Janice had ratted out Tanny’s first boyfriend to her father, lying that Landrew Mitchell had taken her virginity. No one ever saw him again. Tanny was fifteen by then, and her own viciousness had taught her some subtlety. Janice was the subject of a series of nasty rumors that prevented her dating seriously until Tanny left to join the marines—at which point those rumors mysteriously dried up.

  The terrain shifted, growing hilly as they made their way through the city. Streets followed the topography rather than conforming to a grid like most colonies. It had an almost Mars-like feel, where the residents preferred natural geography to modern efficiency in city planning. Tanny swung the hover-cruiser through a near-empty shopping district in one of the valleys, then along a natural pass where more low-altitude traffic flowed.

  How Janice would react to her arrival, Tanny could only guess. She had come to the wedding, but they had barely exchanged a greeting. A lot of time had passed since their childhood feud—and Tanny, for one, was old enough to consider anything prior to her enlistment to be “childhood.” She could only hope that Janice felt the same.

  Carl’s snapping fingers startled her from her musings. “Hey, I said you missed the turn.”

  “Sorry,” Tanny replied. She slowed and swung the hover-cruiser around in a U-turn.

  “Sure you don’t want me to drive?” Carl asked. “I can keep this tub under two-hundred,” he added, and she could envision the lopsided grin that went along with it without having to turn.

  Tanny checked the speedometer and they were only doing eighty. “Nah, I’m good. Just a lot on my mind.”

  “You just say your awkward little hello, and let me talk to her,” Carl said. “In fact, the less you say, the better. Your mother told me the stories of you two spitting and scratching at each other growing up. I bet there’s a lot she didn’t know, too.”

  “Probably,” Tanny muttered. If Carl was fishing for more bait, he was going to need a less obvious hook.

  “This gonna be a problem?” Bryce asked. “I mean, maybe we can just get me to a terminal, and we can meet with your cousin later, once I’ve—”

  “Nope,” Carl said. “Well, I mean, yes it’s a problem, but no, we’re not changing the plan. Janice is family; how bad can it get? Blood’s thicker than water, after all.”

  “What’s that even mean?” Bryce asked. “We’re not at sea or anything. What’s water got to do with it?”

  “Hmm. That’s a good question. Probably ought to change it up on circumstance. Thicker than opium for narcotics smuggling. Thicker than liquid nitrogen for cryonic kidnappings. Thicker than—hey, what is Janice up to, anyway?”

  “Mining equipment, far as I know,” Bryce replied.

  “Shit. Not sure blood’s any thicker than that stuff,” Carl replied. “Some pretty dense gear involved in mining.”

  “It better be,” Tanny said. “Or we’re in trouble.”

  “Let’s just leave a placeholder,” Carl said. “Blood’s thicker than somethingorother. Fill it in as needed. Today, let’s hope it’s thicker than hair gel.”

  Tanny felt her face warm, and wondered whether it was due to embarrassment or a lack of Pseudoanorex in her system. Possibly both.

  # # #

  There was no holovid to watch,
but Mort sat on the couch looking in its general direction anyway. At his side, Kubu took up the remaining space on the cushions, his head resting on his front paws. An empty jam jug lay on its side by Mort’s feet, the insides licked clean. Kubu didn’t protest when Mort rested a hand on his back.

  “Hope you’ve learned a lesson in all this,” Mort said. “A beast of lesser intestinal fortitude wouldn’t have survived those poisons you ingest.” He made no effort to simplify his vocabulary, unlike the others. Kubu didn’t understand complex English any worse than he understood the monosyllabic drivel they cooed at him. Esper was the worst of the lot; she must have told Kubu what a good boy he was a hundred times.

  “Kubu’s tummy hurts.”

  “Well, not shit, you Jörmungandrian eating machine,” Mort replied. He wondered momentarily whether somewhere on Kubu’s homeworld there were myths about a dog devouring the sun to end the world. “Those pills of Tanny’s—Mommy’s—aren’t fit for human consumption, period. Loads of scientific swill, crammed tight as they can pack it into tiny capsules. They’re no good for her, and she’s built up a tolerance to them. You stick to the food we give you, and keep your damn muzzle out of the beer.”

  “Kubu’s tummy still hurts.”

  “You are a master of conversation,” Mort observed. “Still better than Roddy when he’s sober, though.” He scratched behind Kubu’s ears, which caused his tail to start wagging weakly. “That, you understand, at least. Things would be so much easier if you could talk. Well, I mean you can talk, you just don’t … oh, good Lord, we’ve been idiots.”

  Mort extracted himself from the couch, where Kubu’s bulk had been resting against him. The canine rolled onto his side and looked up with baleful eyes. “Stay with Kubu?”

  Mort was two steps from his quarters when his conscience snagged him by the back of the collar. Kubu whined, and that was that. Such a pathetic, innocent creature, barely able to string three words together. With a sigh, Mort settled back onto the couch and resumed scratching behind Kubu’s ears. “You’ll feel better before Mommy will, I’ll wager. Then, it’ll be your job to comfort her. Hopefully, we can have a little surprise for her.”