Calculated Risk

by Zen DiPietro

  “We’re here only briefly, I’m afraid,” Nagali said with regret. “Got a job lined up. But we were hoping to stock up on a few things, if you have them.”

  “I’m being tight-fisted these days, stockpiling what we might need right here on Zerellus. But for you? Whatever you need.”

  “You’re the best.” Nagali beamed at her. “Cabot has the list. He’s good at recordkeeping.”

  Cabot, who apparently had been demoted to recordkeeping drudge, wordlessly handed over an infoboard.

  Lanska studied it. “I’ve got everything but the blistercake mix. I have the flour, though, if you want to mix them up yourself.”

  Nagali shot Cabot a look, but he shook his head. Individual ingredients like that were great in rough conditions on a planet, but not on a space station. Simple preparations or ready-to-eat portions were best.

  “No thanks,” Nagali said. “Just the other things.”

  Lanska looked at Omar and gestured to a wheeled pallet. “Grab that and follow. We can start gathering these, since you’re short on time.”

  Without waiting for a response, she and Nagali walked away into the stacks of goods.

  Maybe they had things in common, after all.

  “Ever hear of an anti-grav cart?” Omar asked as he pulled the pallet behind him.

  “Sure,” Lanska called back. “Got one?”

  “No.”

  “Me either. They’re expensive.”

  Nagali asked, “Where are your employees? Not that I mind putting my meathead brother to work.”

  “One went home to Sarkan. The Atalan earned enough money for her ticket to a refugee planet. And the one remaining is on an off-planet rendezvous for supplies.”

  Oh, yes, an off-planet rendezvous. This was trader speak for getting illegal stuff done where nobody can see it.

  “So we’ll just have to do this ourselves,” Lanska concluded. “Ah, here we are. Shelf-stable rastor dumplings. How many did you need?”

  It was a strange shopping experience. Cabot and Omar trailed Lanska and Nagali, packing items onto the pallet as directed and saying little else.

  “It’s like a sadder, lamer version of going to the grocery with my mom when I was a kid,” Omar said to Cabot in a low voice.

  “Was Nagali a pain in the butt then, too?” Cabot asked.

  “Oh, yeah. She’s always been a huge pain in the a—” He cut off the word when he noticed Nagali glaring back at him, and segued into another sentence altogether. “—Aaapple fritters! I love those. We should get some.”

  Omar grabbed a box of fritters and set it on the pallet.

  “Those aren’t shelf stable long-term,” Lanska pointed out. “They’re good for a month, at best. They’re very popular here, though.”

  “No problem, I love fritters,” Omar declared, sounding jolly.

  “No, you don’t,” Cabot reminded him.

  “Shut up.” Omar scowled at him. “Nagali gets really mad if I bad talk her in front of her friends.”

  “Good save, then, I guess,” Cabot answered. “But you’re paying for those fritters.”

  Omar sighed. Then he brightened. “I can give them to Nagali for her birthday.”

  “That’s not for four months. They’ll have gone stale.”

  Omar smiled. “Exactly.”

  Cabot laughed. “You wouldn’t dare.”

  “We’ll see. I still owe her one for filling my quarters on Dauntless Station with crates of medicinal biogel. I couldn’t even sleep in there.”

  Hm. Omar took most things on the chin like a good sport, but he didn’t like having his sleep messed with. Maybe he really would retaliate against Nagali and risk the fallout.

  “I’d aim bigger,” Cabot said.

  “What?”

  Cabot looked to make sure Nagali and Lanska had moved too far ahead to overhear. “If you’re going to get back at her, you can do a lot better than some stale pastries.”

  “Good point.” Omar said. “I’ll think big—”

  A massive boom cut him off, shaking the warehouse.

  “That can’t be good.” Omar reached for the stinger he had at his waist and bolted in the direction of Nagali and Laska, yanking the pallet along behind him.

  Cabot’s ears were ringing a little or else he might have suggested Omar leave the pallet behind. Since it didn’t seem to be hindering him, it probably didn’t matter.

  When they turned the corner, they found an aisle strewn with goods that had fallen over, but no Nagali or Lanska.

  “Where did they go?” Omar asked.

  “I don’t know. We should—”

  The quiet whine of a stinger blast cut off Cabot’s suggestion to go to the back of the warehouse to look for them.

  Instead, they dropped down, hunkering behind a large pallet stacked with heavy crates.

  They remained quiet, listening for movement or footfalls.

  Nothing.

  Cabot carefully slit open the package of apple fritters.

  “Not the time for a snack, man.” Omar whispered.

  Cabot shook his head at him, tamping down his amusement by putting on a disapproving expression. Picking up a fritter, Cabot tossed it to the end of the row.

  A stinger discharge blasted it to fritter bits.

  Whoever it was, they were close and they weren’t using non-lethal settings, but at least Cabot now had a general sense of their location.

  They couldn’t just crouch here, waiting to get shot.

  Cabot leaned close to Omar’s ear. “How fast can you run while pulling this thing?”

  “Fast.”

  While that wasn’t as precise or as convincing as Cabot had hoped, he decided to go with his plan anyway.

  “When I give the signal, run like hell and don’t look back. But most of all, don’t forget to pull the pallet.”

  He sat himself in the center, on top of the rastor dumplings crates. The apple fritters rested in front of him.

  He turned his head and raised his eyebrows at Omar. Omar held up his hands in a sure, whatever gesture.

  Cabot grabbed a fritter and chucked it as far as he could in the opposite direction.

  Fortunately, Omar took that as the signal and jerked the pallet into motion. Cabot leaned forward at the waist to avoid flying off the pallet.

  The crates and rows were whizzing by, so it seemed Omar had been right about his ability to pull this thing fast. Cabot kept flinging fritters as they went, hoping that the extra noise would throw off whoever was out there. He also did his best to aim a couple of stinger blasts at items that would fall in the opposite direction as they passed. With any luck, the sounds would throw them off, and maybe the attackers’ path would even be blocked.

  It was hard to shoot straight while zipping along on a pallet, though. Every time Omar course-corrected to avoid running into something, Cabot lurched to one side. He whipped his head around to see how far they were from the exit. If they could get to a defensible position, they had a chance to get out of this.

  Whatever this was.

  Heavy footfalls indicated hot pursuit. Someone was catching up to them.

  Cabot lowered himself as much as he could, to present the smallest target possible. As soon as he saw a person emerge around a corner, he snapped off a shot. The aim was off, though, and only hit the man in the shoulder, slowing him.

  Cabot shot again, this time center mass. Down he went, unconscious.

  Good.

  Then they went through a huge delivery doorway and raced down a hall.

  “Here!” Nagali popped out of a door and gestured them in. The opening to the room was too narrow for the pallet, so Omar ditched it and ran after Nagali. Cabot leaped to follow.

  Nagali closed and locked the door behind them.

  “What do we have?” Cabot asked.

  Lanska was hunched over a security screen, looking at the monitors. “Saw you get one. Dead?”

  “No. Non-lethal shot.” Cabot wasn’t in the habit of killing people witho
ut having at least a little bit of an idea what was happening.

  “A shame,” Lanska said. “He might wake up, and there are three more. These guys are my direct competition. They’re mad I completed a deal they couldn’t.”

  “You snaked their goods?” Cabot translated.

  “Something like that,” Lanska admitted.

  “Yep, that’ll do it,” Omar said, frowning at the monitors. “How protected are we in here?”

  “Depends on what they’ve got. That door is certified to E4 standards. It can withstand a minor explosion, but the walls are only E3.”

  “That doesn’t excite me,” Nagali said.

  “It’s not supposed to,” Lanska answered distractedly.

  “So what’s the plan here?” Cabot pressed. “You’re the only one who knows this building.”

  “Just one second…” Lanska stared intently at the screen. “Right. There.”

  Finally, she looked up and met Cabot’s eyes. “I have an exit plan, of course. I can toast this place to destroy all evidence, but that also means destroying my inventory. Needless to say, I’d rather not do that. So if you three help me take care of these guys, I’ll give you ten percent of everything in there.”

  Nagali opened her mouth, and Cabot saw her intention to go with the nuclear plan. No doubt she found it a more exciting option.

  He jumped in before she could speak. “Each.”

  “What?” Lanska and the others looked at him.

  “Ten percent each.”

  Lanska blew out a breath, but nodded. “Seventy percent is way better than nothing, and we don’t have time for protracted negotiations. Fine.”

  She crossed the room and yanked open an electrical panel. Except it wasn’t an electrical panel. It was a gun locker.

  “Prelin’s ass!” Omar stared at the arsenal in awe.

  “Oh, that is nice.” Nagali stepped in and grabbed a pulse rifle. “This one’s mine, and don’t expect me to give it back after, either.”

  Lanska was hardly in the position to argue.

  Omar grabbed two heavyweight, offset rifles that looked more like handguns in his meaty mitts. “Yeah, these are mine now.”

  Cabot kind of wished he’d gotten to those first, but didn’t want to be left out. He grabbed a sawed-off assault rifle and a belt with eight grenade pouches that were—conveniently—already filled.

  “Lady,” he said to Lanska. “I don’t know what you’re about, but I like how you plan ahead.”

  Lanska grinned suddenly and grabbed two pulse pistols out of the locker before closing it. “And you’re not nearly as boring and finicky as Nagali said you were.”

  Cabot looked at Nagali, who shrugged, not the least bit embarrassed.

  “Can we get going with whatever we’re about to do?” Omar asked.

  “Right.” Lanska returned to the monitors. “I’ve locked the doors behind them, so they can’t get out.”

  “Meaning, we’re trapped in here with them?” Nagali asked.

  “Well, that’s one way of looking at it. But there are four of us, three of them, and I have a plan.”

  “Oh, a plan, well, that’s sure to do the trick,” Omar muttered sarcastically. “Plans never go wrong.”

  Nagali slapped his arm.

  “If we run away, they’re going to keep coming after me. You too, if they figure out who you are.”

  “I’m not keen on killing people just to make your life easier,” Cabot said. He couldn’t afford to get caught up in a local turf war or whatever this was.

  “We won’t kill them,” she assured them. “I want to bundle them up, return them to their boss, and let them know that if they don’t leave me alone, things will get very bad, very fast.”

  “How’s that?” Nagali asked.

  “This.” Lanska took a silver tube about the length of her hand from her pocket. “I’m going to tag them with trackers. They won’t know they have one in them, they won’t be able to find it, but I’ll know exactly where they are at all times.” She started laughing. “And they’ll have no idea how I know. I’ll be able to keep track of everywhere they’re going, even who they’re talking to. I could steal all their business.”

  Cabot wanted to know more about that device, but a bang outside indicated that their planning time had drawn to a close.

  Omar grabbed his guns, but Lanska put a hand on his arm. “Hang on. This isn’t a guns blazing situation. We’ll do this smart.”

  She returned to the monitor. “I’ve locked the last door behind them, too. So it’s them out there, and us in here. And you can see where each of them is, see?” She indicated the screen. “And, like I said before, those walls are E3.”

  “Oh, I like it,” Nagali said. “I like it a lot. I’ve got the one on the right.”

  “Middle guy,” Omar piped up.

  “I guess that leaves me the woman on the far side,” Cabot said, moving to the other side of the room.

  “They’re moving in on the door, so let’s go,” Lanska said. “Three, two, one, fire!”

  They blew three small holes through Lanska’s walls, and all three targets immediately dropped.

  “That was too easy,” Nagali complained. “Let’s do it again.”

  “They’re already unconscious,” Lanska pointed out, opening the door. “It’s pointless to shoot them again. Come on, help me get them shackled. They’ll come right back around since the wall burned off most of your energy.”

  Nagali sighed, but followed. “This had the makings of a great story,” she complained as she took shackles from Lanska and slapped them on the guy she’d dropped. “But none of us even got shot at. So lame.”

  “I got shot at. But just lie,” Cabot advised. “Say all of us got all kinds of shot at.”

  She stood and sniffed. “I guess I’ll have to.”

  Omar grinned. “Did you see us with that pallet? Me pulling and Cabot throwing fritters and shooting? That’s a darn good story right there.”

  Cabot laughed. “We used up all your fritters, though.”

  “What a shame!” Omar exclaimed. “Oh well, too bad.”

  “We could get you another package,” Lanska said, not picking up on the joke.

  “No, I don’t want to cut into my ten percent!” Omar said far too jovially.

  “Right. Okay. I’ll grab a spare pallet and we can get these jerks loaded into my delivery van.”

  “Then what?” Omar asked.

  “Then we deliver them,” Nagali answered. “Right?”

  “Right,” Lanska agreed. “Omar, you can come with me to round up the guy Cabot put down.”

  Cabot and Nagali waited for them, keeping an eye on the three people with their ankles bound and their wrists behind their backs. They were already waking up.

  “So what did she mean,” Cabot asked, “when she said you told her I was boring and finicky?”

  Nagali flapped her hand. “Oh, you know, girl talk. But that was before.”

  “Before what?”

  “Before now.”

  “Is something different now, compared to then?” he asked.

  “Yes. You used to be so caught up on PAC regulations and all. Now you’re more like you were before.”

  That didn’t add up. “Wait, you said I was boring before now.”

  “Now, not before now, I mean before before. Like when we were married.”

  “Okay,” he said slowly, trying to follow her seemingly circular logic and confusing phrasing. “So before before, and again right now, I was, and am, cool. But before now, which was in between before before and now, I was boring and persnickety.”

  “Finicky. But close enough. And yes.”

  “Wow. I think something’s wrong with me.” He put his hand on his forehead.

  Her eyes widened and she touched his cheek. “What, are you having a heart attack or something? You need to get more exercise. You’re getting old, you know.”

  “No, it’s not a heart attack. I just understood what you were talking ab
out. I must be brain damaged or something.”

  She gave him a shove, but laughed. “I like that we’re having nice times together again.”

  “I wouldn’t call this nice.” Cabot frowned at the people wiggling on the floor.

  “Nice is relative. As far as some things go, this is very nice,” she insisted.

  “If you say so. I’ve never found taking hostages to be nice.”

  She shrugged. “There are some things we’ll never agree on.”

  He laughed and put his arm around her, then kissed her temple. “You’re right about that, you horrible, wicked monster.”

  She laughed again. “See? It’s like old times.”

  Lanska and Omar returned. Omar pulled a cart with a shackled guy on it, while Lanska looked disappointed to see Cabot’s arm around Nagali.

  “Oh, it’s like that, is it? That’s a shame.” Lanska shrugged, then looked to Omar. “But good looks run in the family, so all is not lost.”

  Omar made a gagging sound. “No, no, you cannot hit on my sister and me in the same breath. Sorry. No way. Freeborn out. You and I are never happening. I beg you to never even imagine it inside your head.”

  Cabot smothered a laugh behind his hand.

  Lanska sighed. “Whatever. Let’s load these guys up. They’re stinking up my warehouse.”

  After dropping off Lanska’s competition to their boss, Cabot had a new opportunity. He was now a ten percent stakeholder in this warehouse. Lanska encouraged them to take goods now, but Cabot had other plans.

  “No, I’ll pay you for the things I’m taking now, and maintain my ten percent ownership. I’ll even offer you my investment advice, if you want it. And I’ll cash in that ten percent later on, maybe when I really need it.”

  Lanska gave him a long, shrewd look. “It’s a risk. If I go out of business, you get nothing.”

  “I’m willing to take that risk. From what I’ve seen, you’ll find a way to stay standing.”

  “Fine,” Lanska said. “I’ll call you about investing, maybe, in the future.”

  “Do it.” Cabot transferred the cubics for his purchases to her via an infoboard. “Having connections in bad times is even more important than having connections in good times.”

  She frowned at him. “Maybe I won’t have to hate you for stealing Nagali, after all. I mean, I’m not promising anything, but we’ll see.”