by J. N. Chaney
“I’ve got a better idea,” Pinetti cut in, suddenly looking sly. To Leira, she said, “I’ll take your credits, and we’ll call Sawyer’s debt to me square. I’ll let you worry about breaking his legs to get it back.”
Dash opened his mouth, but before he could speak, Pinetti turned to him. “I’ll also give you a full load of anti-deuterium.”
Dash closed his mouth, narrowed his eyes, then said, “But…”
Viktor shifted uncomfortably. “Here comes something unpleasant.”
“Oh, you have no idea,” said Pinetti.
“What do you want in exchange?” Dash said.
“A lift,” said Pinetti.
“Come again?” said Dash.
Pinetti paused, turning her head toward a narrow door behind the counter. “Conover?”
A thump came from beyond the door. “What?”
It was a young, surly, male voice. That was all Dash could tell. Still, it started an uneasy feeling in his gut. “Pinetti, what are you—”
“Conover,” she said again, ignoring Dash and speaking louder. “Come out here!”
After another thump and a few bangs, a chunky figure appeared in the doorway. He was human, male, and young indeed, Dash noted—late teens or early twenties, with fair freckled skin and red hair loose in wild curls. He wore functional clothes, synth-leathers over grey coveralls, and had his face shaped into a bored sneer. As he stepped up beside Pinetti, though, it was his eyes that caught Dash’s attention. They were a strikingly pale grey, but not a natural sort of grey. The color was too uniform, the light reflecting off them in an oddly crystalline sort of way.
“What?” he snapped. “I’m busy.”
Pinetti turned her scowl fully on him. “Doing what?”
“Stuff.”
She sighed and turned back to Dash. “This is my nephew, Conover. Conover hates it on Penumbra. Don’t you, Conover?”
“It’s a boring, middle-of-nowhere shithole, so yeah. With a passion.”
“And I hate having him here,” Pinetti went on. “So, here’s what’s going to happen. I’m going to give you a full load of fuel, and you’re going to use some of it to take him away from here.”
“So, you want free passage for him?” That tense feeling in Dash’s stomach drained away. Passenger work could be annoying, but considering the circumstances, he couldn’t complain. “Not a problem. Where am I taking him?”
“Like I said, away.”
“Away to where?”
“Just, away. Let’s call it a tour. You’re going to take him on a tour.”
That tight, tense feeling barged its way back into Dash’s gut. “For how long?”
“For however long it takes you to work off the cost of a full load of fuel, and you know what?” She looked back at Leira. “You can keep your credits. I’ll square Dash’s debt right now. And, at the usual rate for passenger carriage on the Needs Slate.” Pinetti picked up the data slate from the counter and tapped at it. “Yes, it looks to me like you’ll be touring Conover around for a long time.”
Dash held up a hand. “Okay, wait a minute. You want me to carry this grumpy kid around?” He looked at Conover and said, “No offense,” then turned back to Pinetti. “That’s going to be months.”
“If I could figure out a way to make it last even longer without it costing me anything,” Pinetti said, “I would.”
“I don’t think I can.”
“It’s either that, or you pay me the one thousand, five hundred and seventy-five—”
“Hey!” Dash protested but shook his head as Pinetti opened her mouth. “Yeah, I know, interest.”
“Anyway, it’s this, or you pay in full now. Or, of course, I could have your legs broken. Probably your arms, too, considering how much you’ve owed me, and for how long.”
Dash looked at Leira and Viktor. Leira had a bemused look, while Viktor’s was noncommittal. He finally released a sigh.
“So, I agree to take him, and we’re totally squared up—and that includes interest—and I get a full load of anti-deuterium for the Slipwing.”
Pinetti nodded. “That’s the deal.”
Dash grimaced inwardly and resigned himself to the situation. “Fine.” He looked at Conover. “Can you do anything?”
Conover looked back, blankly, then wiggled his ears. “I can do that.”
“No, I mean—oh, never mind.”
Someone let loose a soft, amused snort. Dash didn’t know if it was Pinetti, Leira, or Viktor. All he knew was that it wasn’t him.
Dash assumed it would take a while for Conover to gather his things and get himself ready to leave for what could be months, at least, but all the young man did was shove a few things into a go-bag and shuffle around the counter, apparently ready to depart. Dash wondered just how Pinetti had ended up saddled with her sullen nephew but decided not to pry. Her deal was, on the face of it, a really good one, which probably meant Conover was going to be a true pain in the ass. But it absolved Dash of a lot of debt, so there was that.
As he and his—now—three companions left the Eternal Grind, Leira sidled up to him.
“If you owed her so much money,” she said, her voice pitched low, “why did you agree to come here?”
“It’s not quite that bad. I just thought I had, you know, a better relationship with Pinetti.”
“You thought you could play her.”
“Always worked before. She must be getting cynical in her old age.”
Leira glanced at Conover, who ambled along without speaking. “I can’t help thinking she might have played you, Dash.”
He shared her glance at the young man, then said, “Tell me about it.” His gaze went back to Leira.
They turned onto the Street of Lost Skins, taking a more roundabout route back to the spaceport and the Slipwing. The street was so named, or so it was said, because an ancient forerunner race had used it for a dueling ground. Dash wasn’t sure where that story had come from; there were some bits of wall and a pointed arch that looked like ruins poking up along the street, but xeno-archaeology wasn’t exactly his strong suit. It made a good story, at least. As they passed a kiosk made of scrap tubing, polyfiber tarps, and another of the ubiquitous cargo containers, Conover suddenly spoke up.
“I’m hungry.”
Dash glanced at the kiosk. Steam wafted up from pots and bowls simmering away on induction heaters; as he watched, a short, squat woman served up stringy noodles from one into a bowl. His stomach growled at the sight, but he just glared at Conover.
“So? Are you asking to be fed?”
“Well, yeah.”
Pinetti had been clear—passage for Conover included feeding him. Dash sighed and said, “Fine. We’ll grab something before we head back to the Slipwing. Pinetti’s fuel should’ve been delivered by then, anyway.”
The noodles turned out to be pretty good. The surprisingly broad array of spices and sauces to flavor them were even better. Dash actually took a moment to savor the experience of eating; it was rare that he ever dined, as opposed to just refueling his body on the fly. This was somewhere between the two.
“So, Conover,” Viktor said as they lounged around a table made from a cable-reel beneath a faded tarp, “what do you do?”
Conover paused, a noodle hanging from his mouth. He slurped, sucking it past his lips. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, well, you must do something with your time. Do you study? Work?”
“I just…” Conover stopped, then shrugged. “I just do stuff.”
“Okay,” Leira pressed, “what sort of stuff?”
He slurped noodles again. “I study stuff.”
Leira exchanged an it shouldn’t be this hard look with Dash. “Okay, well, that’s interesting.”
“Science stuff,” Conover said—the first unprompted statement he’d made. “You know, science and technology. Especially alien technology. I’d love to discover some.”
Now Leira’s look turned uncomfortable. She glanced at Dash,
then Viktor, said, “Ah,” and returned her attention to her own noodles.
“Well, Conover,” Dash said, “that’s very interesting. But we don’t really do much with, well, alien tech. Leira and I are couriers. We run jobs, do deliveries.”
“Carry passengers,” Viktor muttered.
“And, yeah, we carry passengers. But it sounds like we’re going to have you around for a while, so anything you can do that might be helpful, I’d appreciate it.”
“If I’m a passenger, I don’t have to work, though, right?”
“Well, technically, no, you don’t.”
Conover smiled. “Technically right is still right.”
“Sure, it is. But I think you’ll get pretty bored just hanging around on board the Slipwing while we work.”
“I’ll find something to do.”
“Okay,” Dash said. “Well, I can help with that. What sort of things do you think you’d like to do while you’re here?”
“Stuff.”
Dash leaned back in his seat and gave Viktor and Leira an I give up look. As he did, Conover said, “I’ll tell you one thing I can’t do.”
Dash leaned forward again. “What’s that?”
“Fight.”
“We don’t really do a lot of fighting.”
“Tell that to those guys,” Conover said, tossing a nod somewhere behind Dash.
Dash turned. Sure enough, a trio of thuggish looking men hovered just outside the confines of the noodle stand. Their glowering attention was clearly fixed on them. Or, Dash noted, it actually seemed to be fixed on him.
Dash put his noodle bowl down. “I think we should plan to head back to the Slipwing. Like, right now.”
“Do you know them?” Leira asked.
Dash shook his head. “Nope. I know the type, though. Muscle for somebody.”
“Somebody must have recognized you, sent them after you,” Leira realized, her brows knitting together.
“It happens.” Dash pushed his chair back and stood. “You guys don’t need to get involved.”
“Dash,” Viktor said, his voice a warning, “there are three of them.”
Dash looked over his companions. Viktor might be able to carry himself in a fight, but he was on the old side. Leira was probably okay in a scrap, but she’d recently suffered a bad concussion. And as for Conover…well, he already said he couldn’t fight.
“Once I’m done with these guys,” Dash said, “we’re going to move, fast, back to the ship. Okay?”
Everyone nodded and stood. Dash turned on his charming smile and approached the trio.
“Howdy, fellas. We’re just heading back to our ship. Got places to go, people to see. You have a nice day, now.”
He started to walk around them. One of them, a swarthy man with a patchy beard and a series of random lines tattooed on his face, moved to block him.
“You’re not leaving Penumbra until you’ve had a chat with Ely.” The speaker was a second man—big, chiseled features, but marred by a bad plasma burn-scar across one side of his face. The last man, the smallest of the trio, with dreadlocked hair, moved to start working his way behind Dash.
Dash frowned. “Ely? Don’t recall anyone named Ely.”
“Ely,” Burn-Scar said, “from the Broker’s Quarter. He seems to know you. Found out you were here; wants some money you owe him.”
“Clearly, there’s been some mistake.”
“Nope. He was clear. You come with us to see him, or we beat you to hell and take whatever we find. Might take that ship of yours, too. Slipwing, isn’t it?”
Dash looked at his companions. Both Leira and Viktor looked on the brink of intervening, which would just make things complicated. So, he turned back to the trio then kicked out, his foot striking a vicious blow that buckled Burn-Scar’s knee. The other two immediately moved in, but Dash spun a full circle and now crouched, arms spread, knees bent. He lunged, punching and chopping Tattoo Face to the ground while kicking out at Dreadlocks, deflecting him for a second. A second was all he needed. It let him spin back and straight-arm the man in the throat, sending him stumbling back, gasping. He followed up with a pair of vicious jabs that knocked him flat, spinning again and dropping Dreadlocks with a piston kick to the head. A last, brutal chop put Burn-Scar down like a sack of trash.
Dash relaxed. All three were down for good; Burn-Scar and Tattoo Face groaning, Dreadlocks gurgling wetly through his injured throat. A small crowd, displaced by the sudden fight, gave the whole situation a curious look before mostly moving on.
Leira, Viktor, and Conover just stared.
Dash shrugged. “Taught myself some moves. It’s a way to pass the time on those long trips, you know?”
They kept staring.
“So, uh,” Dash said. “We should probably go now. Ely might not be the only one who wants to, you know, talk to me.”
As they hurried back to the Slipwing, Viktor asked, “Who’s Ely? And how much do you owe him?”
“No idea. Probably just a shakedown.”
They reached the Slipwing to find that Pinetti’s fuel had been delivered, as promised. Once they’d loaded it and lifted off—making a fast burn up to orbit so they could put Penumbra behind them sooner rather than later—Dash took a moment to try to remember who Ely was.
He hadn’t been lying to Viktor. He really couldn’t recall.
Between that, and now Conover, who was hunkered down sullenly somewhere behind him, there was a feeling that space just might be safer.
Maybe.
“Yeah, I definitely gotta stop owing people money,” Dash muttered, as the rumble atmosphere rushing past the hull faded and the sky turned to endless black.
5
Dash frowned at the vid transmitted by the maintenance drone. He’d dispatched it to examine the Slipwing’s hull, something he hadn’t gotten around to doing during the whole rush to, and then from, Penumbra. The planet now lay far behind, but was still visible as a mottled, bluish disk. They still hadn’t translated, because they hadn’t decided where to translate to. As his nominal employers, that was up to Leira and Viktor, and they were hunkered down in the hab module now, discussing that very thing.
Unfortunately, that left Dash with Conover. The young man sat in the copilot’s seat, looking alternately bored with everything inside the cockpit, or bored with everything outside of it. Dash tried making conversation, but Conover’s one-word answers, distracted nods, and monosyllabic grunts convinced him to give it up. Instead, since they were staying in real space for now, Dash decided to launch a maintenance drone and look over the damage they’d taken from those particle beams. He was especially keen to see the parts of the Slipwing’s hull he couldn’t check while they’d been landed.
The drone drifted past the auxiliary comms array, moving across the top of the hull just ahead of the fusion drive. The drive was shut down, of course—the drone would just be a puff of vapor, otherwise—but there were enough residual neutron emissions to make this part of the ship hazardous for direct inspection.
“Ouch.”
Dash zoomed in on the image, taking a closer look at a deep furrow plowed through the hull that protected the drive. Unlike most of the other scars on the Slipwing from the encounter, this one cut deep enough to have him worrying. This was going to be an expensive repair, requiring time in a compositing bay.
“About eight Gigawatts.”
Dash glanced at Conover. The kid was peering over his shoulder at the vid display. “What?”
“Eight Gigawatts,” repeated Conover. “That’s how strong the beam was.”
“How’d you figure that?” Dash asked.
“Your hull is made of a refractory dura-ceramic composite. Not to mention the beam had to break through the shield first. I’m assuming a two-second impact time, but that’s pretty approximate, so there’s some uncertainty.”
“Yeah, I get it.” Dash looked around but saw no data pad, and nothing about it entered into any of the screens or terminals around the cockpit. �
��How’d you calculate that?”
“The armor’s index times thickness in centimeters, divided by two, then—”
“No, I get how you calculate it. But how did you calculate it, like, just now, sitting there?”
Conover shrugged. “I just calculated it.”
“In your head.”
The kid nodded.
Dash looked back at the vid. He punched a few commands, and the drone calculated the particle beam’s power at eight-point-zero-five Gigawatts, plus or minus an uncertainty factor.
Dash knew the formula—roughly—but there was no way he could have done it in his head.
He looked back at Conover. “That’s quite a trick.”
The kid’s freckled face hardened in a frown. “A trick? It’s not a trick. The calculation is—”
“Yeah, okay, just a figure of speech.” Dash looked into Conover’s strikingly pale grey eyes. “Where did you learn, well, how to do that? Or learn the formula?”
“I told you. I like science stuff.”
Dash looked back toward the vid. “Hm.”
“The question is,” Conover said, “why was whoever shooting at you just trying to disable your ship?”
“What?”
“Except for that one up there”—the kid gestured up and behind the cockpit— “all the other hits on the ship are less than four Gigawatts. Those wouldn’t burn through much at all.” Conover gestured at the drone’s imagery. “That one, though, was a lot more powerful. If it had cut through all the way, it would have taken your fusion drive offline, right?”
Dash gave a slow nod. “Yeah, it would have. It would have taken down the translation drive, too.”
Dash thought about the damage to Leira and Viktor’s ship. What he remembered of it had been similar. Their drive had been knocked out, but the damage had otherwise been mostly superficial. Meanwhile, Dash remembered the weapons fired at the Slipwing as he approached the battle had been full-power discharges. One of them had hit, leaving a deep gash near the cockpit. That had definitely been an attempt to take Dash out of the battle before he’d even joined it.