Starship Grifters (A Rex Nihilo Adventure)

by Robert Kroese

  I went to the airlock and looked at the viewscreen. A lone man in a vac suit was floating outside the hatch. His gloved fingers were fumbling with a folded sheet of paper, which he eventually got unfolded only to lose hold of it in the vacuum of space. The sheet drifted slowly away into the void and the man pushed off against the hatch, activating the vac suit’s built-in thrusters to pursue it. He miscalculated the paper’s trajectory, though, and shot past it. He flailed wildly as he activated the suit’s attitude rockets, trying to reverse course, but in his agitated state only managed to cause himself to spin wildly at what I calculated to be precisely seventy-eight revolutions per minute.

  As I watched the spectacle, Rex came up next to me. “That’s got to be the most uncoordinated Sp’ossel I’ve ever seen,” he observed, taking a sip from a gin martini.

  “I’m not sure it’s a Sp’ossel, sir,” I replied. “They always travel in pairs. And as you indicate, this man seems to be unfamiliar with working a self-propelling vac suit.”

  The man eventually managed to stop his spinning and get his bearings. After some time, he spotted the paper, which was still leisurely retreating into the blackness. He took careful aim and activated his thrusters again, cautiously moving toward the paper. He was moving only slightly faster than the paper, though, and it looked like it was going to take him a good twenty minutes to catch it.

  “I’m going to take a nap,” said Rex. “Let me know if there are any exciting developments.”

  I nodded and continued to watch the slow-motion scene unfold. After about ten minutes, the man apparently lost patience and gave another burst to his thrusters. Bad idea. Now he was slightly off target and would probably miss the paper entirely. The man flailed crazily, trying vainly to alter his trajectory. Finally he got as close as he was going to get to the paper and made a Hail Mary swat at it. The paper slipped away before he could close his fingers and floated off into space.

  This scene might have gone on until the man’s suit ran out of oxygen if he hadn’t happened to send the paper on a trajectory straight for the Flagrante Delicto. I watched out a porthole as the paper slowly approached, eventually flattening itself against the portal for a split second before bouncing away. It read:

  GAVIN LARVITON

  UNARMED

  LET ME IN

  There was a thump against the hull, and I heard the man scuffling across the ship toward the hatch. I went to find Rex, who was snoring in his bunk.

  “Sir,” I said. “It’s Gavin Larviton. Should I let him in?”

  “Huh?” Rex mumbled groggily. “Larviton? Hell, no. Let him float.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Wait. What does he want?”

  “I have no idea, sir.”

  “All right, let him in. If he’s out there in a vac suit, he must be desperate. Maybe we can get some money out of him.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I went back to the airlock and opened the hatch. Larviton pulled himself inside and I shut the hatch. Once the airlock was pressurized, I opened the inner door. Larviton pulled off his helmet and stepped into the ship. He didn’t look happy.

  “Are you two complete idiots?” he snarled.

  “I’m not the one who just spent half an hour chasing a sheet of paper rather than using the standard hailing frequencies,” I replied.

  “Who is it?” Rex called from behind me.

  “Still Gavin Larviton, sir,” I replied.

  “Larviton? What’s he been doing this whole time?”

  “Chasing a sheet of paper in his vac suit, sir.”

  “How did it get in his vac suit?” Rex asked, coming up next to me with another martini in his hand.

  “Do you have any idea how hard it was to get you out of that battle station, Nihilo?” Larviton growled. “Or to get you released from Gulagatraz? If you had any sense of self-preservation at all, you’d be a thousand light-years from here. Do you have any idea how big space is? How incredibly, mind-bogglingly huge it is?”

  “Here we go,” said Rex, rolling his eyes. “I mean no disrespect, sir, but my associate and I already have our own convictions regarding Space, and we’d appreciate it if you would respect our right to our own beliefs. If you have any literature that you’d care to leave with us, we’ll take a look at it, but—”

  “I don’t have any literature!” Larviton shouted.

  “I shouldn’t wonder,” I replied. “Holding on to sheets of paper doesn’t seem to be your strong suit.”

  “Look,” Larviton snarled. “You need to leave. Now. The only reason you haven’t been spotted yet is that everybody on that battle station is preoccupied with searching for a nonexistent city on Schufnaasik Six.”

  “Why would they do that?” asked Rex, puzzled.

  “Because you told them it was there!” Larviton yelled.

  “No I didn’t,” said Rex.

  “Yes you did, you moron! You told Heinous Vlaak there was a cloaking facility in a secret city on Schufnaasik Six.”

  “I think I’d remember something like that,” said Rex, looking to me for reassurance.

  I shrugged noncommittally.

  “It sounds a bit preposterous,” Rex went on. “I mean, a hidden city? How can you hide a city? You’d need some kind of extremely advanced cloaking device.”

  “Exactly!” Larviton exclaimed. His face had turned an alarming shade of red.

  “So you’re saying there’s a cloaking device on Schufnaasik Six capable of hiding an entire city?”

  “No! There’s no cloaking device! It’s all a ruse!”

  “Aha!” cried Rex. “So you admit it!”

  Larviton seemed on the verge of tears. He took a deep breath and started again. “OK, I don’t know what your problem is, but let me explain this very clearly. You need to get the hell out of here before the Peace Fortress detects your ship. Otherwise you’re going to be tortured until you tell Vlaak about the cloaking device.”

  “You said there wasn’t any cloaking device,” Rex said. “What could I possibly tell him?”

  “That there isn’t any cloaking device! And once he knows that, you’ll be of no more use to him. He’ll kill you!”

  “That does seem to be the sort of thing I’d like to avoid,” Rex said. “OK, we’ll do it. For three hundred million credits.”

  “What?” cried Larviton. “Did you hear anything I just said? I’m saving your life. Why should I pay you on top of that?”

  “You tell me,” said Rex. He took a sip of his martini. “I’ll admit to being a little foggy on this whole situation, but you seem to be very concerned about my well-being all of a sudden. So you can explain your angle here or you can just transfer three hundred million credits into my private account. Your choice.”

  Larviton looked at me and then back at Rex. “Can I get one of those?” he asked, his eyes landing on Rex’s drink.

  Rex smiled. “Sasha, would you make Mr. Larviton a martini?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I made the drink and we retired to the main cabin of the Flagrante Delicto. Larviton had removed his vac suit and taken a seat. He seemed to have calmed down a bit.

  I had to admit, despite his memory repression–induced fog, Rex had a point about Larviton. Why was he suddenly so concerned with Rex’s well-being? Was he afraid that Rex was going to tell Vlaak something Larviton didn’t want him to know? If so, what could that something possibly be? Rex was so confused, he didn’t even know anymore what he didn’t know.

  “Look,” said Larviton. “I’m sorry about the whole business with Schufnaasik Six. I had a balloon payment coming up and I needed to offload that debt. I heard about your little adventure on Chicolini and thought you might be the sort of person to get excited about the prospect of owning a planet and overlook some details, like existing liens on the thing. I’ll talk to the Galactic Credit Bureau and
see if we can work something out. I already applied some leverage to get you released, you know.”

  “You also told the GCB where to find us,” I said.

  “True,” replied Larviton. “But that was for your own good. It was the only way to spring you from Malarchian custody.”

  “So what’s your angle?” Rex asked. “You’re obviously working with the Malarchy on something. Probably selling them weapons. And knowing you, you’ve overpromised and . . . oh, ho!”

  Occasionally Rex has a moment of insight. Usually those moments have to do with figuring out a scam that Rex wished he had thought of.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “The pluralistic antipathy cannon,” Rex cried gleefully. “It doesn’t work!”

  “Of course it works,” snapped Larviton. “It’s just . . .”

  “Over budget and behind schedule. You told Vlaak it was fully operational, figuring that it would take him a while to find a use for the thing. After all, destroying an entire planet is a pretty extreme thing to do. Wasteful. Even the Malarchy doesn’t destroy entire planets without a good reason. But then we came along with a damned good reason: a strategically important target hidden somewhere on an otherwise worthless planet.”

  I made my impressed whistling sound. I could tell from the look on Larviton’s face that Rex really had pieced it together.

  “The cannon will work,” Larviton said. “My engineers just need a few more days. I had to make you disappear so that I could convince Vlaak not to use it on Schufnaasik Six yet. As long as you’re missing, he can’t risk destroying Schufnaasik Six City, because it’s the only lead he has for the cloaking device technology. So he’s scanning the planet, trying to find the city, but of course he’s not going to find anything because it doesn’t exist. How in hell did you manage to convince him that there’s anything worthwhile on that useless chunk of rock anyway?”

  “Beats me,” said Rex. “I just found out about it myself.”

  “Memory repression,” I explained to Larviton. “Rex didn’t want Vlaak to be able to extract anything from him about Schufnaasik Six City or the cloaking device.”

  “You mean the fact that neither of those things exists.”

  “Correct.”

  “So you were planning on being recaptured? Why?”

  “I’m a bit fuzzy on that one,” said Rex. “Sasha, a little help?”

  “You wanted Vlaak to blast Schufnaasik Six City. You were going to apply for development funds, claiming they did serious damage to the infrastructure.”

  “Ha!” exclaimed Rex. “Yeah, that sounds like me. Man, that’s genius. Of course, the plan depends on a functional pragmatic angioplasty cannon. How long until that thing is working?”

  “A few days,” said Larviton. “A week, tops.”

  “Hmm,” said Rex. “All right, then. Sasha and I should probably disappear until then. What do you say we meet back here in a week? The cannon will be working and Vlaak will undoubtedly be fed up with his scans revealing no hidden city on the planet. He’s not going to find a hidden city on the planet, is he?”

  “I’d say it’s very unlikely, sir,” I replied. “Since the city exists only in the real estate of your subconscious, and that’s some pretty shaky ground at present.”

  “OK,” said Rex, nodding. “So we just need to lay low for a week. Then we arrange to get captured, convince Heinous Vlaak to blast Schufnaasik Six, and then apply for our development funds. Larviton gets to keep his weapons contracts with the Malarchy, and I get duly compensated for the loss of my planet. Now we just have to settle on my fee.”

  “Fee?” asked Larviton. “What are you talking about?”

  “For disappearing for a week. I’m not going into hiding for free, you know. Earlier the number three hundred million was mentioned.”

  “You’re disappearing so that you don’t get tortured and killed by Heinous Vlaak,” said Larviton incredulously. “You need an additional incentive?”

  “Eventually Vlaak is going to use that cannon to wipe out Schufnaasik Six,” said Rex. “If I stick around and get captured now, Vlaak is going to try to use the cannon right away and you’re going to be in a lot of trouble. But after your contracts are terminated and you’ve been thrown in a dank cell somewhere in that battle station, I’ll still get what I want. Once the cannon is finished, Vlaak will blast the planet and I’ll get my twenty billion credits.”

  If you can escape again, I thought.

  “You’re insane, you know that?” said Larviton. “This plan of yours could go wrong a hundred different ways.”

  Rex shrugged. “I’ll take my chances.”

  Larviton studied him for a moment. “Fifty million credits,” he said at last. “Paid one week from today, if you keep your head down until then.”

  Rex shook his head. “Two hundred. Half now, half in a week.”

  Larviton snorted. “No way.”

  “Then I guess Vlaak will get to test your cannon early.”

  Larviton gritted his teeth. “One hundred total.”

  “One fifty. Half now, half later. This is my final offer. Take it or I have Sasha park this ship right on Heinous Vlaak’s sundeck.”

  Larviton agreed. What choice did he have? A sane person is always at a disadvantage when negotiating with a lunatic. Muttering angrily to himself, he transferred seventy-five million to Rex’s secret account with the First Bank of Orion, then suited up and jetted in awkward zigzags back to the battle station.

  “Where should we go, sir?” I asked Rex once Larviton was gone. “We could easily hide unnoticed for a week in the asteroid belt of the Zebulon system.”

  “No way,” said Rex. “I’d go batty out there. And we’re running low on supplies.6 Find us a course back to that swamp moon.”

  “You mean the forest moon.”

  “Right, the swampy one with the car park.”

  “Are you sure that’s a good idea, sir? We just betrayed the rebels to the Malarchy and got one of their operatives thrown into prison, possibly forever. Also, we still can’t provide the cloaking device you promised them. Oh, and now that the Malarchy knows there’s a rebel base there, the moon is probably under attack. So if the rebels don’t kill us, Malarchian marines probably will. And now that I think about it, that’s actually the best-case scenario.”

  “The Malarchy doesn’t know where the base is, do they? I mean, where on the moon?”

  “As far as I know, Wick just told them it was on the forest moon.”

  “Did he tell them about the tree?”

  “I don’t know. Probably not.”

  “OK, then it’ll take them a few days to find the base, so we’re in no immediate danger. And I suspect they’ll want to make a big show of blasting the rebels to dust. Vlaak is itching to use his new asthmatic apostrophe cannon, which of course doesn’t work. And that damn battle station is so big, we’ll see them coming ten parsecs away. The rebels don’t know we sold them out, do they?”

  “I doubt it, sir. Wick hasn’t had any contact with them.”

  “And the rebel base whose coordinates we just gave to Vlaak is the last place he’d look for us. Plus, I think I might be able to scam some more money out of Princess what’s-her-name. We’ve got a week to blow; I should be able to come up with something. The matter is settled. Rationalize a course back to that swampy forest moon.”

  There was no point in arguing further. I rationalized the course and a day later we were back at the rebel base.

  * * *

  5 You’d think that Modern Science would have found a cure for the common hangover by now, but evidently Modern Science has been too busy doing things like figuring out how to reconfigure DNA and creating artificial gravity. Modern Science doesn’t get invited to a lot of parties.

  6 Liquor.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  O
n our way back to the forest moon, I spent some time going over Rex’s finances. Before accruing a liability of 1.6 billion credits from Gavin Larviton, Rex had owed around thirty million credits to various governments, private lenders, and criminal organizations across the galaxy. I remembered fondly a time—was it really less than a week ago?—that thirty million credits seemed like a crushing amount of debt. Now Rex owed over fifty times that amount. The fifty million we’d received from the Frente as a down payment on the nonexistent cloaking device barely made a dent in the debt, and the seventy-five million Larviton transferred into Rex’s account wasn’t going to help much either. It probably wouldn’t even be enough to get Wick out of Gulagatraz—if Rex had been interested in doing that.

  I’m not sure why Rex even bothered to haggle with Larviton over a few hundred million credits at this point; it was like bickering over the size of a tip on a bill that he couldn’t possibly pay. Force of habit, I suppose. For that matter, I didn’t see the point in trying to scam more money out of Princess Willie. How much could she possibly be worth? A billion credits? Even if we could bilk her out of her entire fortune, Rex would still default on the loan and once again become the target of salivating repo bots all across the galaxy. It was a miracle that he had been released on his own recognizance; usually debtors who owe more than a few million are followed by repo bots everywhere they go. Presumably we had Gavin Larviton’s influence to thank for their absence as well—it was in his interest for us to disappear as completely as possible until the plasmatic entropy cannon was operational.

  The only way out of this mess was Rex’s crazy idea of convincing the Malarchy to pay him for destroying his planet. If his plan worked, Rex would be fabulously wealthy. If it failed, he’d be apprehended and tortured to death. There didn’t seem to be any middle option. Any sane person in this situation would do everything possible to make sure things went according to plan—but as should be clear by now, Rex was not entirely sane. And that’s why we found ourselves back at the rebel base, where we could accomplish nothing to ensure the success of the plan and any number of things to derail it. As fate would have it, though, the rebels were already well on their way to derailing the plan when we got there.