I had kept moving slowly, but we were at the main companionway now, and he had a lot more room to move. Blood streamed off his head, and clung to his thick, tangled hair before detaching itself and floating away in heavy red globules, like misshapen berries. His face was pale, and deader than deadpan.
“No sense in that. We have trust issues, you and I.”
Then he slid at me through the air like weightless oil, and I batted at him like a dying willow in a stiff breeze. He didn’t go for the kill immediately, so I thought he was wary of the spanner. But I was watching the knife as he moved, and I didn’t see his free hand until it sort of blurred in front of me, flipping the spanner out of my white-knuckled grip as if we’d rehearsed it. It clattered against a bulkhead, and cartwheeled away – and as I watched it go, I felt a cold thing at my throat.
“Ah…yes! Well, you got me! Haha! Sorry about that, but I had to try, right?”
“No, you didn’t, though I’ll admit your reasoning was sound. So…it’s sooner rather than later for you? Just as well…”
No twitch or change in his expression. No sneer or angry smile. The small cold thing he held under my left ear became a point of absolute and total concentration, and it went from being simply cold, to being hot and edged in a millisecond.
And then there was a loud, crackly snap from behind us, and the man before me just dropped back with clenched eyes, like a stressed rag doll. He drifted at an angle, but didn’t otherwise move a muscle. Further down the companionway, Bayern sidled out from the cover of the hatchway to the bridge. He held a small stunner in a classic one-arm-out-supported-by-the-other pose, made famous by an age of adventure vids. His face was drawn, and he didn’t waver a centimeter in his aim at the man who called himself Genness. He moved closer, coming up behind and touching his target gently with one foot, stunner still set to fire. There was no reaction. The knife drifted freely nearby, and he caught it deftly, pocketing it. He then took out some tapecuffs from a leg pocket, and cinched the stunned man’s hands and feet together. He glanced at me a few times while he worked, but didn’t say anything. The silence was deafening, and I was exhausted.
“So, you really do have multiple personalities. You’re, what… a secret agent?”
“Deegman Security Corps. We had intelligence that indicated there was a piratical agent aboard this cruise, but we didn’t know who. His background checked out, just the same as yours and Sally’s, so the only thing to do was to put someone in undercover.”
“How long did you suspect him?”
“I didn’t. I suspected you. I heard raised voices, and came to look…and listen. When did you figure him out?”
“When PONTE opened fire, I knew he must have been talking to them.”
“That could have been me, perhaps…you’d have had no way to know.”
“Yeah, well, no offense, but the dumb guy act was pretty convincing.”
He smiled, but declined to comment, and instead, asked if I’d swap cabins with Genness (or whatever his name was) in case he had any nasty surprises hidden away in his room somewhere. That sounded prudent, so I agreed, and I shifted my stuff. Later on, we did a thorough search of my new berth for hidden weapons or comm devices, and we found several of each. At this point, though, I was dead on my feet, and figured DAME MINNIE could wait a sleep shift or two before throwing any more surprises at me.
I looked in on Sally before racking out. She lay strapped to her bunk, sleeping almost serenely, unmoved from the last time I’d seen her except for a glob of spittle that hovered near her slack jaw.
I left in a hurry when I realized that the bad guy had been right.
five
*
I expected to hear a lot of flak over all the damage to the boat, once we started making reports back to Deegman, but we got just the opposite reaction. We began sending updates as soon as we had all the basic systems online. I didn’t want to risk draining the battery by putting AG back on, since I didn’t really understand it too well, but Sally did some number crunching, and decided that we could run at half-gee and still have a safety margin.
She was up and at ‘em again within two shifts, despite her injuries – which is good, because I slept for three straight. I let Bayern fill her in on what had happened when she got up, at least the broad strokes. I wondered what her reaction to a competent and intelligent Bayern would be. I wondered what mine would be, since we still had weeks ahead of us together.
It turned out that he was a pilot in SecCorps’ investigative branch, and had gone up against smugglers and pirates closer in. This was his first assignment so far out, but not his first undercover operation. He had a dry sense of humor, and an appreciation for the delicacy of the relationships involved. In other words, he was a completely different guy, and I liked him.
Bayern had used a Captain’s Code I never knew about to lock Genness in his new cabin. The two of us then delivered his meals and took his dirty linens for the rest of the cruise. He was well behaved, but sang his job offer tune a couple more times, to no effect. Sally never saw or spoke with him again, that I know of.
She did think of him, though, I’m sure. We all had time to think. That is, until we got closer in, and the time lag in communications with Deegman shortened to a reasonable level. Then we had more and more live reports to file. We were actually debriefed a half-dozen times before docking, and it was just the beginning.
But it wasn’t the only one.
Bayern made a point of apologizing to Sally for his asinine behavior on the way out. She didn’t believe him at first, and continued to treat him like an annoying bug, but eventually she saw a different guy in place of her ex-husband’s foolish lookalike. By the time we docked, they were inseparable.
We got paid our contract fees, plus an extra bonus for cracking the so-called pirate ring. We were actually minor celebrities for a while; you know, the avengers of Deegman, saviors of the spacelanes, blah-blah-blah. They put the guy who’d called himself Genness in an isolation cell so fast that I’m not sure he ever got a trial – nobody asked me to testify, anyway.
They wanted to send the rest of us back out as soon as DAME MINNIE got all its repairs completed (along with some much needed upgrades), but our contracts were for one cruise only, and I’d had more than enough. So did the others, it seemed, because the owners ended up recruiting a whole bevy of eager beavers from which they could crew DAME MINNIE indefinitely – local talent all, and, I guess, bona fide patriots.
The companies on Deegman announced their intention to buy a couple more “quality seasoned defense boats” (that is, old junks) and build themselves up a real fleet. They were certainly overdue for a more serious view on the issue of self-protection; and a victory – even a shabby little one like this – seemed to be just what they needed to fan the limp spark of national pride.
Whatever.
It was still a backwater to me, and I wanted a ticket to civilization. It wasn’t long at all before shipping got up to speed again, and I scored myself a position on a corporate superliner (helped considerably by a frothing reference from Deegman).
I called Sally before I left. I figured she might want a job, and I thought I could probably get her something on the same ship. Bayern was there with her when she picked up, though, and he had her laughing about something, so I just turned it into a goodbye call. Seems he’d already gotten her a really good spot with SecCorps Maintenance – a steady, permanent position watching over the contracted civvie schnooks who did all the upkeep on their vessels. They wished me the very best, and begged me to come back for a visit someday. I promised that I would, and we all smiled at the lie.
The superliner didn’t seem to really need me, truth be told. I was given the title of Third Assistant Defensive Officer, or some nonsense like that, and I did little more each work shift than show up and run simulations. I used the gym regularly, and lost some weight. I sat and let the days, and then the weeks, and then the months pass.
I don’t know why
, but this time, the waiting wasn’t so bad.
AUTHOR
David Collins-Rivera makes his home in the high desert of Arizona, USA.
Visit his site at http://www.cavalcadeaudio.com/
Send feedback to [email protected]
Street Candles
A Spacer’s Rules For Success
Never be desperate
Never do more than your job description
Never, ever go down the well
Ejoq needs work. The tramp starship GRIZZELDA needs a gunner. But what starts as a last-minute personnel replacement soon turns into something far more, with a non-functional duty station, his predecessor’s emotional fallout, and a deeply buried secret that will change the course of nations.
An epic adventure of intrigue, revolution, and battles among the stars!
Better take a deep breath…
Available now at Amazon.com!
Please enjoy the following preview of Street Candles!
one
*
The interview had gone well.
I was a little worried, because all I’d had to wear on short notice was a rumpled flight suit and a pair of cheap softshoes, but they weren’t looking at my feet. My CV was impressive, even if I say so myself, and I could at least act like a professional when there was a need.
OASIS hadn’t seemed so bad, as colony stations went. Better than some I’d been to, even though the crime rate was way up – but like all such places, it was expensive.
My total assets were limited to a few bags of personal effects, and the severance from my last job. This would change when a ship with fresh data from out Kontas way pulled in. That could be in a day or two – or in a week or two. The difference was critical to my wallet and survival. I had a fair amount of savings, but lag time between system contacts is the bane of everyone. Data moved no faster than the ships that carried it, and it only traveled where and when they did.
A headhunter had succeeded in snatching me up for a long-term training gig three months before on Tantra, way over in Corporate Territory. I’d made all the preparations to break my contract with the Reformed Mormonites who ran the ship I was signed to at the time, so I could work on-planet for a while. I’d never lived under a sky before, and it sounded like a real change of pace. The preparations for this were quite involved, including switching my floating accounts to a local banking institution. But the gig fell through at the very last minute, and I decided to stay with the ship.
It turned out that restoring my financial details was as time consuming as changing them in the first place, and we had to leave the system before I could get it straightened out. That left me with very light pockets. In an effort to curb stopover vice among crew members on leave, they would only pay a small percentage of your wages in hard credit on that ship. The bulk of it went into your banking and investment accounts for long-term growth – and mine were still locked up on Tantra.
The whole thing was a non-event, but one that had hit me hard. I was parked on OASIS with an increasingly desperate eye on all the new ships arriving in-system, very impatient for a more current dataload. We had been on a direct run into AINspace, well ahead of any data from the ports in our wake. And now the ship was gone again, while I was still here, worried about the future.
This unease set in especially hard whenever I bought a sandwich or drink over on “Ptomaine Lane”, where all the cheaper automats were located. If a bag of greasy chipchunks set me back half-a-shift’s typical pay, then it seemed certain I had to find a new job fast, and just let the data creek along at its own pace.
So I scoured the boards and hit the union offices.
Shipboard Weapons Technologists were not exactly ubiquitous. This might make you think there was a great demand for them. Indeed, some outfits wanted trained, experienced gunners – especially the larger company fleets – but sadly, most of the smaller operators just on-the-jobbed somebody already aboard, adding Ship Defense to their long list of other duties. A professional like myself could easily argue that a vessel got what it paid for, and I had on several occasions, but it never seemed to get me the job, so I stopped doing it after a while.
Eight days of biting my nails and watching the grid for new data dumps to the local nets.
I stayed in my cramped rental cube most of the time, and just eyed the stream on my wristcomp and retinal displays. There wasn’t much more to do without money, anyway.
Station violence was on the rise, with a bloody tavern shootout somewhere down on the lower decks locking up local headlines for days. Gunrunners! Gangsters! Hitmen! Hour after hour of shocking vid, juicy soundbites, and Stern Statements from the local badges. Residents were worried, investigators were grim, and outlanders like me, with problems of their own, were bored.
I was doing laundry down the street when my wristcomp buzzed and my retinals flashed to alert me to an opening that was just posted. Details, as always, were sketchy, but it seemed like it was up my alley, so I called right there and then and got an invite. The ship’s Owners/Officers were discussing the gunnery issue over a working lunch. Could I pop by right now for a quick interview?
Um…yeah!
I waited for my underwear to finish, then dumped it off at the cube, combed my hair, and found an elevator. I thought a couple creeps who got on at the next stop were going to jump me; but they were just tired working guys, and I realized I’d been watching too much of the news for my own good. The Offs were gathered at a cheap bistro called “Le Vivre” or something, but it was certainly better than any place I’d been patronizing here, so I didn’t fault them for the choice.
The captain was a tall, dark woman in her early sixties, named Carmichael Maynard – Carmie by her fellow owners there at the table, and, as I later learned, by the rest of the crew. She had long, graying dreadlocks tied strikingly but sensibly high on her head, and sharp brown eyes that seemed friendly but assessing. She intro’d the two others: Pas E’lareda, Chief Pilot – a rail-thin fellow with light brown hair, who could have been anywhere between twenty-five and fifty; and Gasto bin Ragenston, Chief Engineer – squat, paunchy, and in his fifties; he had wild black hair with a beard to match, streaked silver here and there, along with a thick Lowspeak accent (out of Noblespace as it turned out).
“Ejoq Dosantos,” I said with a nod. “Pleasure to meet you all.”
“Likewise,” Carmie said for the others, who likewise nodded and muttered greetings. They didn’t seem cowed or even especially deferential to her; E’lareda, for one, didn’t say a another word during the whole interview, surfing the local network with a digital ring and mirrored display glasses. He might have been doing a background check on me, or he might have been shopping for souvenirs.
Bin Ragenston was quiet too, but it was clear he followed the whole conversation closely. His small, dark eyes peaked out from under a ledge-like brow with tangled black and gray foliage. It would have been easy for him to look severe, but he kept on a neutral face and let the captain do all the talking.
Before anybody asked, I touched the IDent they had out on the table. This way, they could match my DNA, and the capillary pattern of my hand, to both the identifying information referenced by my posted résumé, and an independent look-up of my registered profile in the union database aboard the station. That may have seemed too eager, but I was never one to play interview mind games. No red lights appeared, I guess, because we kept talking.
“We were a little surprised and pleased to see that a Ship Defense Spesh with your qualifications was looking for a new contract, Mr. Dosantos.”
“Yeah, it’s a lucky convergence out here,” I replied, “though I’ve been watching the listings for about a week now. My last ship, TEMPLE HILL, was heading back to its home port in Churchspace for a major overhaul. Those of us from elsewhere were allowed a contract release. Can I ask the name of your ship?”
“We’re the co-owners and officers of GRIZZELDA. Berth 4-J. We need a gunner and we leave tonight.”
“Wow! Okay, I can check the public registry for specifics when we’re done here, but can you give me a quick rundown?”
“Sure. It’s a modified Pelican class Route Trader. Standard crew is twelve, but we tend to double up on other duties. If hired, you would make us ten, which we count as normal. We have just over 40,000 cubic meters of compartmentalized cargo space, and a full load at the moment of non-perishables on spec – the last of which should be onloading even as we speak. Our safe freight mass and acceleration are not to standard Pelican specifications. We treat those details as a trade secret, so you’ll have to sign an NDA if you come aboard. We got in from Tyree about eighty hours ago, and we’re currently on a chartered cruise to Barlow, one-stop over in Chorryl System. We have five passengers, and they’re all awake. No cold passages, as per our charter contract. That’s a dozen freeze tubes flying empty, but we’ve been compensated for it.”
That seemed like a weird stipulation – but private charters were rare, so who knew? I hadn’t even been signed to a ship before that was running under one. I must have raised my eyebrows or something, because she quickly pressed on.
“So, as I said, we…lost our gunner. The contract calls for an experienced SDS in place, and we need someone new immediately. This Barlow seems to be having some political issues, so, the charter aside, I want someone at the trigger for safety’s sake alone.”
A rollarbot with a carafe of coffee came to the table just then, giving us all a few moments of (likely welcome) distraction. As it was the real thing, instead of the fake powdered stuff I usually lived on, I accepted a cup gratefully, and tried not to look ecstatic as I sipped.
“The defensive specs of registered commercial vessels are net-accessible to licensed gunners,” I informed them after a moment. “Again, I’ll do my homework when we’re done here, but can you give me an idea of what kind of equipment I’d be in charge of?”
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