by Wil McCarthy
The third ship was so big she’d thought at first that it was part of the space station. It had taken her a minute to recognize it as H.S.F. Concordia, the famous ship that was allegedly going to carry one hundred lucky contestants to Mars in a couple of years. “My God, will you look at that,” Maag had said. Alice hadn’t known what to say. Mars? For real? But there was Dan Beseman’s ship, larger than life.
Now, onboard the station, a small Asian man in red coveralls brushed past her and Derek, looking like he was in a hurry, with a larger, ginger-haired man trailing after him. These same two people had swarmed past in the other direction not two minutes ago. TPS had been built to accommodate transient populations of up to a hundred people—literally, a hundred!—but its permanent crew was only ten, and they always seemed to be in motion, on their way from somewhere to somewhere else. Cheerful but harried, clearly overworked in their shitty astronaut jobs and just as clearly loving it.
Transit Point Station was on the same clock schedule as Suriname, an hour ahead of Eastern Standard Time. As Alice and her crewmates discovered shortly after arriving, during the evening and night shifts, these modules unfolded into galleys and bathing areas, exercise rooms and sleeping quarters. It wasn’t as nice as the Marriott Stars, but it was a lot nicer than Alice had been expecting. A bit like RV camping, and in the absence of gravity the modules felt pretty roomy inside. With the exception of Rachael Lee, they’d all slept together in the same dormitory module, in sleeping bags like oversized pillowcases hung from the walls. Lee, who had barfed in her helmet, was recovering in sickbay, which was a module unto itself, and capable of serving up to six patients at once. That seemed like overkill to Alice, but it said something about the ambitions of the people who’d built this place. Lots of traffic expected in their future, lots more than today.
But during the “day,” most of these same modules packed up into corridors and workstations, plus gowning and de-gowning rooms for people in spacesuits. This particular module—2C—wasn’t exactly out of the way, but it didn’t seem to be serving any specific function at the moment. It was a good enough place to meet and talk.
Of course, Alice was only here because she was bored and Derek had paged her. She got the sense Derek was here for something more specific than to get a form signed.
“According to your dossier, you’re a qualified pilot yourself,” he told her.
“Gliders only,” Alice answered. “I had some basic single-engine training but not enough to get certified.” She paused and looked at him. “Why?”
“They’re pushing us out of here ahead of schedule, and my copilot isn’t going to make it off Earth in time. I need someone to fill the chair.”
Alice couldn’t quite help rolling her eyes. “We need two pilots for a slow ferry? Really? I took a big rocket here, and we got all the way through boost phase, orbital rendezvous, and docking with zero pilots.”
“True, although that’s frowned on. They wanted you out of there, and up here, in a hurry.”
She frowned at that. “Yeah, we noticed. Why is that? What’s going on?”
Derek demonstrated the art of the zero-gravity shrug. “Not sure. Something about government interference. You heard about the blockade of Suriname?”
“People have been talking about it, yes.”
“Well, that’s part of it, but there seems to be something more going on. Igbal’s worried about, quote, ‘more invasive government assistance,’ close quote.”
“Even up here?”
Derek shrugged again, and for the first time, it occurred to Alice that it might be her own operation that RzVz had caught wind of. The thought gave her instant goose bumps, though whether of fear or excitement she couldn’t tell. Like most Maroon Berets, she had those two emotions pretty well twisted together when she had them at all.
Changing the subject, she said, “How does it help you, to have a glider pilot on a spaceship?”
“In terms of flying, it doesn’t. You’d be redundant and actually kind of in the way. In terms of my pay, it’s the difference between tending a semi-robotic flight and commanding a fully manual training mission. That’s six thousand dollars in my pocket.”
“Ah.” Six thousand dollars didn’t buy as much as it used to before the currency collapse, but for most people it was still a month’s rent or two years of decent haircuts—nothing to sneeze at. That made enough sense to calm Alice down a bit. As a motivator, simple human greed was easy to relate to. RzVz wasn’t a drug cartel; they weren’t going to put a bullet in the back of anyone’s head or anything like that. But they did want their precious profits, same as Derek, same as everyone else in the world.
They also wanted power, she supposed. Not just the power to buy and sell what they wanted, and place their space assets wherever they wanted, but to sidestep government influence in every big and small way they could. To operate out of third-world countries that did their bidding. But even that wasn’t so sinister, because what was the point of power, if not to satisfy greed? Cartels were not motivated purely by money. They were quick to anger, quick to take offense, quick to solve problems with insane levels of highly targeted violence. Corporations—even shady ones like Orlov Petrochemical—were calmer and more predictable. Still, if it were up to her, she would have liked to see them under better control. Bridle the Horsemen, so to speak.
Alice realized, suddenly and with some surprise, that she was a bit of a socialist. Huh. If she really thought about it, most Air Force people were! Praise Jesus, all their actual needs were met by shared facilities and a government salary, and few of them traded it for the private sector until their pensions kicked in and it was safe. Funny, that people like her would rather parachute into a hot landing zone than risk their pride and treasure in the job market.
And it did sound kind of silk, learning to fly a spaceship. Also, and more darkly, she might learn something that would help her escape from Esley Shade Station if her betrayals somehow failed to deliver the station into government hands.
Playing along, she asked, “What do I get out of it?”
Derek seemed to ponder that for a while, before answering, “I guess I could sleep with you.”
It was such a flyboy thing to say, it almost didn’t surprise her, but she pushed him for it, lightly on the chest, with her other arm braced, so he tumbled away from her.
“Try again.”
Snorting as he caught himself, Derek said, “You’d be surprised how often that works. But okay, you’re a cut above the schoolgirls. Duly noted. You want a third of the bonus money?”
“Half,” she said, not meaning it, just wondering what he’d say.
He looked at her sideways. “Fuck are you going to spend it on, Colonist?”
“Don’t care. Oxygen, maybe.”
He snorted again, but with a bit less amusement.
“One third. Final offer. And you get a flight approval on your personnel file, and a pile of hours toward your certification, so I don’t want any shit from you.”
“Deal,” she said, after pretending to think it over. Then, just to be an asshole, she added, “I’d’ve done it for free.”
He nodded. “Yeah, me too. Fucking spaceship, am I wrong?”
And then the two of them were laughing, and that was that.
Changing subjects, she asked him, “If we’re shipping out later today, what’s going to happen to Rachael Lee?”
“Colonist Lee is staying here. I’m told she’s on some kind of probation, might get shipped back home.”
“For barfing in zero gee?”
“For losing her shit about it, yes.”
“Mmm.” That seemed fair. RzVz was no military operation, but it did seem to have a bit of the same flavor, including a low tolerance for bullshit. For a moment, Alice caught herself thinking that was good and would make her happy in her new life.
Derek handed her a little Velcro-backed rectangular patch that said PILOT TRAINEE in gold letters. It was fresh off the fabric printer, still w
arm.
“Once you put this on,” he told her, “you outrank the other colonists, at least until we reach Esley. So I need you to go round them up, get ’em ready for the flight.”
He looked her over for a moment, and then added, “I was an Air Force captain, you know. Fighter pilot. I flew top cover on fifteen Coffee Patch missions, making sure you people had clear skies above.”
Alice considered that. “Am I supposed to be impressed?”
“Just saying, you’re not the only one who’s been shot at.” Then, to her unspoken question, he answered, “The June Massacre? Yes, I was there.”
Hmm.
Once the bankrupt U.S. government had finally given up its drug war and Big Pharma had taken over the job of getting people high, the Cartels had not taken it well. They’d started straight-up taxing the people and businesses in their territory, like legitimate governments high on blood and cocaine. And the actual legitimate governments had taken that badly, and soon everybody was shooting everybody. And yeah, the second time an American judge was murdered right there on the bench of his own courtroom, the U.S. was officially back at war with the Cartels again, and it was personal.
Things had gone well for Uncle Sam, and then really well, because it was finally just a matter of identifying what needed to be blown up, and then blowing it up. Hard times or no, these things were still very much in the American wheelhouse, and the Air Force started racking up impressive numbers, until it was time for the Marines and Army to start actually capturing back territory. Boots on the ground, as they liked to say. Even that had gone well for a while, until the Medellín Cartel had somehow gotten their hands on a shipment of Chinese jet drones, packing enough EMP wattage to microwave a human brain from two kilometers away.
That day—known to the media as the June Massacre and to the Maroon Berets as Zero Extract—was the war’s highest Coalition body count by a factor of ten, and it had been largely responsible for pushing the U.S. back into covert ops, where it was easier to literally hit the Cartels where they lived, with deniability for any atrocities that might occur. Not deliberate atrocities, of course, but there were plenty of fuckups in the heat and confusion of battles taking place on remote, mansion-covered hills poking up out of dense jungle. The Medellín and Chocadores used their own children as human shields, and other people’s children as torture porn to bait ambushes.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Alice said to Derek. What else could she say?
He nodded. “Yeah. Thanks. We undock in three hours.”
He turned to go, on some inscrutable pilot business of his own, before turning and adding, “That trainee patch puts you in my chain of command, by the way.”
“Well, duh,” she answered. But his meaning was clear: Until they got to ESL1 and she reported to whomever, he in fact couldn’t sleep with her, even if he wanted to. Sleeping with direct subordinates was universally forbidden, both in and out of the military.
“Understood,” she added, just to make sure he knew she knew what he was getting at. But it did cross her mind that military and corporate ethics rules probably didn’t apply out here. Maybe not even maritime law, because who was going to enforce it?
When Alice got back to the sleeping quarters, she found Dona Obata engaged in a fierce argument with two men wearing the red jumpsuits of Transit Point Station crew.
“I’m sorry,” one of them was saying, “but your file is red-flagged. Some of the answers on your application don’t line up with your background check, and the AI kicked it back.”
“My background check was finished months ago,” she snapped at him, “and I passed.”
“Data sniffers,” the guy said, shrugging. “They never sleep, they just keep searching.”
“Fucking AI,” Dona spat. “You let me talk to a person about this.”
“I’m a person,” he said. He was black, though not as black as Dona herself. The name tag on his coverall said Cmdr. C. Oliver. “I reviewed the discrepancies myself.”
“What’s going on?” Alice demanded.
“Big Brother, here,” Jeanette mumbled.
Moderating her tone, Alice tried, “Commander, I’ve known this woman for”—for what, a few days?—“a few days, now. I’ve seen nothing suspicious.”
“Reeeally,” Commander C. Oliver said, glaring sideways at her. Not impressed.
It did sound kind of thin. Why had she said that?
“What exactly is the problem?” she tried. Oliver looked at her name tag, saw the trainee patch. Looked back up into her eyes.
“Anomalies,” he repeated. “I mean, people lie on their résumés, it happens, but not everyone has École Polytechnique lying on their résumés for them.”
Improvising, Alice asked, “Meaning what, she hacked her records?”
“I don’t know,” Oliver replied. “I don’t know what it means, but it’s not my job to know. Our instructions are to put her back on the shuttle that brought her here. And so far she’s noncompliant. Are you military?”
“Formerly, yes.”
“You want to give us a hand with her?”
Physically, he meant. Because even out here in low Earth orbit, he didn’t want to assault a woman, or be accused of touching one inappropriately.
Alice looked him over. It was hard to say what separated civilian types from military and first responder types, because civilians could be tough and disciplined people. Football players and street brawlers, CEOs and Cartel jackboys all had their strengths. And yet, she could spot at a glance who was and wasn’t currently in the military. Former military took only a moment longer to sniff out. There was something disciplined and tough about Commander C. Oliver, but he was definitely a civilian. This amused Alice, who had spent her adult life around Spec Ops men who’d think nothing of grabbing Dona by the tits and slamming her head against the ceiling, if the tactical situation appeared to call for it.
However, Alice’s special relationship in this situation offered a whole ’nother approach: throwing Dona under the bus. Dona was burned, as the intel people liked to say, and if Alice tried to defend her, she could end up burned as well. No, thank you.
“What’s your strategy here, Dona?” she asked in a loud voice. “Whatever you were trying to get away with, it didn’t work, and now these gentlemen want you gone. Your new employer wants to stop employing you. And you’re arguing with them? Do you think that’s going to work?”
“What are you doing?” Dona demanded, glaring icily. She was far off script now, and Alice could see that made her dangerous. She would turn to violence if she thought there was an advantage in it. But there wasn’t. What could she do, beat up everyone in this room, and then just board the ferry to ESL1 like nothing had happened?
“Helping, Dona. Are you listening? I’m helping. I don’t know what’s going on here, but if you’re some kind of a spy, I’d say your cover is blown. If you’re not a spy, if you’re some plain old liar, your cover is still blown. Apparently Igbal doesn’t want liars on his station, and I can’t say I blame him. Would you? You’re fired, girl. They’re not letting you on that ferry. So what are you trying to do?”
“Steady now,” Bethy said from across the room. “Nobody wants trouble.”
Dona turned her glare of cold fury in Bethy’s direction, and right there, from the look in Dona’s eyes, Alice could see she’d made the right move. If Alice and Dona and Bethy were all in this together, Dona would know that her own exposure could, ironically and indirectly, make Alice and Bethy more secure. Problem solved, everyone! Government interference found and neutralized! But no, Dona didn’t appear to see it that way. Dona was not in this together with Alice and Bethy, but had some other sort of plan in mind. To cut Alice and Bethy out? To seize the station and all its assets for France, or for the Congo, or for the highest bidder, or whatever? Maybe even for the fucking Cartels. Oh, Dona.
“Maybe you’re a spy,” Dona said to Bethy, then turned to Alice to include her in the statement as well. It was a naked t
hreat—I can expose you right here and now—but Dona’s heart did not appear to be in it. She was compromised, all right, but she and her backers still had a good deal of deniability. If she went and compromised the whole operation, there’d be nothing but ass fuckings all around, and the ESL1 Shade still in the hands of a nutjob.
Dona sighed, and then the tension went out of her, and she did a remarkable job of starting to actually cry. “I just wanted to be here. The future, outer space. Didn’t you? Oh, damn, I knew it was too good to last. I went to college, okay? Free online college is still college. I know what I know! Give me an aptitude test!”
Commander Oliver now looked embarrassed. “That’s not my department, Ms. Obata; I don’t even work for Renz Ventures. When you get to Earth, I’m sure you can petition your case with the admissions board. Right now, I’m afraid Pilot Trainee Kyeong is correct: you’ve been fired. If you don’t get on that earthbound shuttle ASAP, you can be charged with trespassing, and billed for the air you’re breathing. Which isn’t cheap. That is my department, so I’d encourage you not to test my patience.”
“So what am I supposed to do?”
“Put your spacesuit on. Now. I’ll have someone stow your belongings on the shuttle for you. I don’t have any pilots to spare, but the shuttle can take you back to Suriname on its own. It’ll be a few hours before the orbits line up, but you can spend that in the shuttle, floating free. Not here.”
“Damn it. Damn it. Really? Are you serious right now?”
Oliver’s silence said it all.
Bethy, wisely, looked away rather than involving herself any further in the dispute. And so it was Maag and Alice who wound up escorting Dona to the gowning module, and watching while she stripped to her 3D-printed “space underwear” and sullenly donned her spacesuit. Distinctly unfashionable, the space underwear consisted of a dark gray, stretchy, remarkably slippery T-shirt with a kind of shelf bra built in, and a pair of tight-fitting shorts in the same color that reached almost to the knee, like bicycle shorts. They were basically just to keep spacesuits and coveralls from chafing or sticking or stinking in the wrong places. Loaded with antimicrobials and “odor-neutralizing and odor-sequestering molecules,” they were designed to go a whole week between washings, and to permit the aforementioned spacesuits and coveralls to be used for months, because apparently laundry was hard to do in outer space. It used up a lot of water or something. This had been invisible to her at the Marriott Stars, but people made a big deal about it here.