Cosmic Cabaret

by SFR Shooting Stars

  Devastating charm hadn't saved him from losing the only woman he ever loved to the harsh ruling of the Landfall Cultural Trust, but it had won her heart in the first place. And it could be used in other situations as well. "Once my duties to the stardrives have been completed, I'd be honored if you were to introduce me to some of the wonders of the legendary Quantum."

  "I'd certainly be happy to. In fact, it would be my personal pleasure to open the doors to Quantum’s delights for you. Tonight’s nine o’clock show features gravity dancers that cannot be missed. The show ends early enough for you to prepare for your duties in the morning." She turned a winning smile on him. “Here on LS Quantum, in the unlikely event of a work situation, we can accommodate both work and play.”

  The ops director looked considerably more chagrined than the concierge. Thann could see why Ops limited his time with customers. Thann nodded and addressed Ops. "As I said, department heads, first thing in the morning." Then he smiled at the concierge. “And gravity dancers tonight.”

  Five

  Dinner paired Thann with an octet of octogenarians from minor Houses, including one man and his “grandson” whom Thann pegged right away as a bodyguard. He faced the stony bodyguard and avoided the gaze of Garibaldi, who interjected multiple times about his “work with the Cultural Trust.”

  While the elders weren’t saying it, the general atmosphere was that Garibaldi tried too hard. The grandmother to Thann’s right tapped his arm for the third time. “What House did you say you represent, young man?”

  Thann demurred. “I’m simply a representative from the driveyards.”

  He specifically requested his concierge not place him with any of the upper echelon Houses for the duration of his stay. It wouldn’t be appropriate, he told her, when he possessed no Social Capital of his own, for any of them to risk their own index entries. She had to refer to the Master of Ceremonies’ staff for the appropriate protocols, but she fulfilled his request, to his relief.

  “Driveyards? Harrumph!” Garibaldi nosed in on his conversation. “Not entirely unheard of for the mercantile class to enter into the Nobility.”

  Thann looked away, as did half the table, being of mercantile origin themselves. The awkward dinner was more than enough social interaction for him for one night.

  He might have told Ops he would wait until morning, but alone in the luxuriously-appointed suite reserved for him near the ship’s portside bow, Thann lay on the floor and closed his eyes to simply listen to what the beautiful lady had to tell him about her drives. It was the first time he’d experienced silence since boarding the star liner.

  The song was there, if you listened. Her heartbeat, her systems, the music she sang to herself as she sailed through space. Thann drifted for awhile, feeling almost a sense of peace, save for a single, sour note. Not even a dissonance. Only a hesitation--a single instrument in a complex orchestra, a mere nano-second behind the beat.

  All the time he’d spent alone in the driveyard lab had taught him to trust his instincts over an info-slate. Nevertheless, he called up the information using the AI-enhanced neural interface that had been implanted in his brain at age sixteen, and been a constant companion ever since. “Evia, be a dear and call up the history of LS Quantum’s fusion assembly serial numbers, from developmental R&D onward, please?”

  Certainly, Master Thann. The female voice was for his ears only. Once upon a time, she’d carried the conspiratorial tones of a trusted friend, sharing a naughty secret, as the EaVesdropper AI models were designed to--absorbing the onslaught of information aimed at Landfall’s well-to-do and filtering it through the lens of a highly-customizable, programmable, trusted friend. Over the years, tweaks to EV-1A’s personality matrix had turned her into a capable lab assistant. Instead of repeating the news from the gossip feeds, EV-1A gave him the rundown of the dailies from R&D and the experimental lab works.

  Now, she filled his vision with scrolling information, pieced out into sub-section headings that displayed over what he saw in the real world via an augmented reality interface. He scanned, calling out with hand motions the segments he thought relevant. “Workhorse models...retro-fitted with observation windows along the main assemblies, of course, because stardrives are really neat to look at...plasma hogs, that figures. Something as big as this tub isn’t going to be zero-fuel consumption… Hmm...looks like the coil shape might encourage plasma thickening in rare circumstances… Evia, call up a map and get me to the stardrive trough. Discreetly. I don’t want to have to stop and make nice.”

  Six

  Milady stood in the portside stardrive trough, one ear cocked towards the fusion assembly. That fluctuating resonance was beginning to grate on her, all the way down to her back teeth. Even though Palma insisted there was nothing wrong, she still felt it. She checked the logs again. Everything well within tolerances. Minor fluctuations in the injectors. Maybe a good brush-cleaning would do it.

  She’d found a safe place to hide after that announcement shattered her composure. Every single communiqué that came through on the info slates bore that sigil – and every time she looked at it, pain lanced through her head and her throat closed up.

  The large chamber that held the injector assembly for the fusion drive was deserted — most of the fusion work could be taken care of with ‘bots, except for the finest of calibrations. If she was being technical — and that was her job as a technician – this was the finest of calibrations.

  The thing in her head purred as she cleaned the lines and replaced anything mechanical that was even slightly older than brand-new. The Blue Star Line might not be overjoyed at the extra expense the contracting company would charge them for the labors, but the alternative was failing the Lunar Spiral and having to call for a tug to pull them back to Landfall.

  The empty cavern echoed with the rhythmic drone of the fusion system. She slipped a cleansuit cap over her head and pulled a pair of magnifier goggles and a headlamp over top of it, then secured an anti-humidity mask over her face. The contented humming of the thing in her head created a pleasant counterpoint as she worked. Which made it more jarring when a voice startled her out of reverie.

  "This thing uses manual labor for fusion injection?"

  "Only when it wants the injection to be perfectly tuned and expertly calibrated." Her tart answer echoed through the cavernous room. Even distorted, something in the timbre of his voice sent a warm thrill up her spine. She held her breath for an instant until the thrill passed, then exhaled.

  She held her breath again while she threaded a filament tinier than a human hair and studded with bristles that were barely more than a few magnetized molecules in thickness through one of the plasma conduits. Once it found entry into the conduit, she breathed again and spoke. “Blue Star didn't contract us out to put ’bots on task."

  The man behind her laughed, a gentle sound that he sounded quite easy in making. "I believe you," he said, placating her. "And I admire your dedication. I've got to ask you to step out though. Otherwise I can't go through my own system checks and get this barge from grunt to purr."

  Purr? The expression tweaked the back of her mind. In a different location than the machine in her head, which also currently purred. Funny that the stranger should use that term..

  Ridiculous. Don't even go there. This is Quantum, and you don't care who you used to be. She finished her task, forcing herself not to go too deeply into it or to rush because she suddenly felt uncomfortable. "Just… One… Second."

  "You don't use sonics?"

  Now it's going to be two seconds, she thought. But it wouldn’t do to talk back. No need to get written up. "It’s much more thorough to do it manually. Nothing like a physical inspection to unlock a particularly stubborn bit of scoring on the inside." As she finished her sentence, she extracted the tiny brush and held it up, twisting her body to show her visitor.

  The light from her headlamp blazed brilliantly and through the magnifier she could see the reflections of tiny crystals that had
formed on the inside of the conduits, extracted by the brush. The light from her head lamp made those crystals shine so that even her visitor could see them without the aid of a magnifier. "See those shiny little specks? Those are heavy impurities. Iron, nickel, chromium. They cut channels from the plasma’s hot core to the outer edge and dissipate the energy."

  Her visitor knelt down and wrapped his fingers around the brush handle she still held. Warmth from his hand seeped into hers, even through the haptic gloves they both wore. He pulled her hand closer to his face, and for a brief second, she thought he might kiss the back of it, like a noble formally greeted a lady.

  Her vision was still distorted, but she saw the blur of his features — magnified ridiculously in her eyepiece – scrunch up as he examined the tiny tool. "Well I'll be Torch-burnt," he murmured. "Given the size of the system, this little bit drives down efficiency, just not outside tolerances." His bemused tone ticked something in her chest, and she suddenly wanted to know more about someone as fascinated by the plasma as she was.

  Behind the mask, she licked suddenly dry lips. "But thick plasma would be just enough to reduce perfect efficiency in whatever sub-system the conduit feeds." She squinted at the motes caught in the light from her headlamp. "Anything less than perfect won't make this run happen." She flicked off the headlamp’s bright glare, but kept the magnifiers secured. “We could miss the gravity slingshot.”

  His face might be huge and distorted to her eyes, but his presence didn’t feel distorted at all. It wrapped around her like a warm blanket. “Our momentum would stall. We’d never make it close enough to Yelena.”

  She flipped off the magnifier lenses. The goggles returned to their regular protective eyewear function. “We’d be stalled in space.” Without the magnification, she caught a good look at him for the first time. As much as “getting a look” of someone with various pieces of cleansuit could be looked at.

  He had the loveliest eyes. Gray-blue, like the lichen in the greenspace in the sublevels of Landfall. No--wildflowers. Behind the mask, her mouth fell open. I know wildflowers. How do I know wildflowers?

  "You're very astute. You remind me of someone I--"

  A loud thumping interrupted them.

  “Milady! Milady, we need you!” Delen, one of the hospitality managers, stood outside the viewport on the observation platform that allowed visitors with an interest to peer into the stardrive trough. Her words were barely understandable, but her gestures demonstrated her urgency.

  Milady glanced back at the stranger. “I guess I’ll be getting out of your way now.”

  Behind his own hood, the stranger reached out. She thought he might take her hands, beg her not to go. Instead, he held out her brush. “Don’t forget this.”

  The moments that it took her to accept the small instrument from him stretched out, pinning each one in a separate frame in her mind. “I’ll--I’ll see you around, I guess.”

  His eyes crinkled at the corners, betraying a smile that must have been under his own mask. “Count on it.”

  Long after the engineer had left the room, Thann remained motionless. He stared out the viewport at the hostess who’d interrupted them, the woman’s sleek chignon a stark contrast to the cleanroom cap his engineer wore. Moments later, when she stepped into view to join the hostess, he had a chance to observe her. She still wore the mask as she gestured in response to the hostess’s question.

  The hostess displayed clear distress, but his engineer moved thoughtfully. She was not receptive to whatever the hostess proposed and Thann grew intrigued by her. More intrigued, he should say.

  He’d been surprised to find someone else in here, investigating the same problem. He’d made his way from his room to the stardrive trough while EV-1A condensed the shift reports for all four plasma systems and targeted the most likely weakness in the portside trough in spite of the fact that all but one of the reports had noted nothing--not even a slight concern. “Evia, who authored the shift log noting the minor imperfection?”

  Master Thann, I can only access a designation - M2/T3. The T-numeric indicates the engineering team, but the M2 callsign has no reference in the logs. I do apologize.

  “Not your fault.” He still watched the engineer and the hostess. Her cleanroom cap was coming undone and a stray tendril of dark hair fell out of it. Perhaps she wasn’t the same person, but she could have been the engineer he’d seen when he first boarded--the one doing flips in null-grav.

  Now he felt something internal give a flip. He shied away from it. This ship was full of illusions and carefully-designed entertainments to distract and dazzle. He watched her throw up her hands and turn away from the hostess. The agitated tone of her voice carried through, if not the content of her words, and for a minute, he remembered another time, when another woman had thrown up her hands in frustration. Thann, you’re impossible! I have to study tonight!

  Of course, that time and that woman, the thrown-up hands softened, returning to cup his face, and the tone went from agitated to amused, and some time later, to a contented somnolence. You’re incorrigible. And you’re mine, Thann Zalco.

  Thann blinked, shook his head to clear it of spectres from the past.

  Illusions. Distortions. Even its engineers dealing in real science weren’t what they seemed. The one he’d just met cleaned plasma conduits and summoned ghosts.

  Seven

  “You’re going to have to go on to replace Portia.” Delen tapped her info slate.

  “What?” Milady dropped the toolkit into her coverall pocket. “Go on where?”

  “The anti-grav stage.” Delen made a vague gesture towards the upper decks of Quantum, where the opulence strayed to the fittings and decor, rather than the engines and the drives. “Portia dislocated her knee in the practice harness. She’s out of commission for three days, and the understudy failed her security background check.”

  “And there’s no other dancer or acrobat who can fill in for her.” Milady’s tone was dry. She was still half back in the stardrive trough with the stranger.

  Delen rolled her eyes. “You’re the only other person we have who can do it.”

  “How so? I’m not a dancer! I’m not a showgirl. I’m a mechanic. I can dance with the stardrives--” she broke off abruptly as a half-formed, misty wisp of thought tuned the purr in her head into some higher frequency.

  She remembered music. Warm light against the backdrop of brilliant crimsons and oranges of the sky, high above the brown-gray clouds. Silks and perfumes and shoes that made her feel precarious. Warm, male hands at the small of her back and secret thrills originating from a pair of lips pressed to a spot just below her ear.

  “Milady!”

  She crashed back out of the memory fragment and back to the present. Delen was flapping her hands in front of Milady’s face. “You’re the only one who knows how to move in zero-gee.”

  Milady shook her head. “Malcolm is certified in it. So are Boris and Samuel and Gage--”

  “You fit the costume and nobody wants to see Boris’s hairy ass in a cabaret costume pretending to be a star princess.”

  The fog cleared all the way from Milady’s head with that image. “Wow. I did not need to experience that.”

  “And neither does the audience of the seven o’clock show. Get down to Make-up and go see Portia for the costume.”

  “Fine.” Milady threw up her hands in frustration. “But just once.”

  Milady lost the spanner she’d been clutching when it dropped into the pile of glittering skimpy strands that were Portia’s costumes. "Oh, for —" she plunged her hand deep into the glittering mess of strands of jewels, gemstones, and sequins adhered to narrow strips of performance fabric that self-sized to the wearer. "Only one who fits the costume," she muttered. Anyone could fit the costume. Even Boris and his hairy ass.

  From across the room, with her leg propped up on an immobilizer, Portia gestured imperiously. "Careful with those! Once the sequins start popping off, everything just goes to ni
ne Hells."

  Milady found the spanner and retrieved it, tucking it into the pocket of her coveralls. "I’m less worried about the sequins popping off than I am about me popping out." She eyed Portia suspiciously. "Are you sure that knee is as nonfunctional as you say it is?"

  Portia rolled her eyes and held out the info slate. "See for yourself. The diagnostic doesn't lie." She waggled the slate in Milady’s direction. "Just put on the costume, do some flips in the null-grav field, and then you can come back here and poke that spanner anywhere you want to on my leg."

  "I'm not qualified to fix mechanical appendages," Milady muttered, looking down at the pile of sequins and beads and fringe.

  "Then I guess you'll just have to be qualified to do a null-grav cabaret dance interpreting the first colony ships to make landfall on Landfall,” Portia quipped. “Use extra pins on the headdress to keep it from falling into your face."

  Milady found a stray bead that had fallen off the costume. "You owe me for this. Everyone owes me for this."

  "Cheer up. That new executive from the Stardrive company is going to be in the audience. Won't it be a kicker for him to see a stardrive mechanic doing things in null grav that most mechanics can't do." Portia chuckled. "Wearing an outfit most mechanics couldn't pull off."

  Milady dropped the tangle of beaded costume. It landed back in the bin with a clatter, followed by a tinkle as another costume’s bells were disrupted "S-stardrive exec?"

  A sudden curl of dread school through her lower midsection. She'd only heard the Zalco rep had docked some time this afternoon. She'd only caught a flash of his formal suit when she was in the trough earlier, in his House colors of azure and crimson, before her eyes caught sight of the logo, the house sigil, embroidered on the short dress cape he wore over one shoulder. Her brain was immediately pierced by internal feedback and she nearly passed out. Thank the Torch she was in zero-gee and only spun gently before she was dragged her back to her senses by a diagnostic bell.