by Joseph Lallo
As is the case with all local monopolies, there is no competition, so they are free to charge whatever they want. Sure, the government makes enough of a stink to keep the price within reach of the middle class, but you are still at the whims of the corporation. If you disagree with their policies, or you can’t afford the price, or you require a degree of discretion that doesn’t fall in line with their terms of service then, officially, you are out of luck. Unofficially, there are alternatives for those not too choosy about speed or legality.
That’s where Lex and other freelancers came in. They were willing to carry packages to and from just about anywhere you might want them to for the right price. Depending on the individual and the start and end points, they might even get it there faster than the official methods. This was because they, as a rule, couldn’t use the main routes. The main routes belonged to the big corporations, and you couldn’t fly them without their blessing and paying their licensing fees. Freight was one of their biggest sources of income, so you better believe they weren’t letting anyone else deliver using their routes without coughing up. This forced freelancers to use more direct courses. It also forced them to risk getting blasted to pieces by nearly invisible debris and the speeding ships of other freelancers, since the space was barely mapped and completely unmonitored. Well, not completely unmonitored. Regular patrols of corporate ships swept the more useful chunks of space to try to weed out the riffraff, but the sheer size of the area involved made it rather hit or miss.
The better freelancers took a hybrid approach to their deliveries. Standard operating procedure called for a dead sprint toward a star system or asteroid cluster. Then drop down to conventional speeds to weave through it. Anyone tracking you on sensors would more often than not lose you among the other ships and space rocks. Anyone following you directly would have to slow down and take the same route. At that point it was just a test of who was the better pilot, the very fact that attracted Lex to the business to start with. While they are tied up in whatever mess you picked to hide in, you gun it to the next thicket. The popular parlance had dubbed it “Sprints and Jukes.” It was like a needle hopping from haystack to haystack.
Right now he had to find the right haystacks and the paths between that didn’t intersect corporate space, wouldn’t get him killed, and WOULD get him to Tessera V in six days. It didn’t leave much room for error. He tapped and swiped his way through the various stellar maps, downloaded some fresh data, and pushed the whole mess into his flight computer. Before long he’d found a crooked, zigzag path that seemed mostly survivable, and set a course for the first sprint. All that remained was to make it out of the cluttered star system before shifting to FTL speed. He took the opportunity to finish getting out of the monkey suit and into the flight suit. It was just a reinforced and airtight jumpsuit with sealed boots and gloves, but aside from being marginally more comfortable, it could couple with a helmet and keep him from popping like a ripe tick in the event of a sudden change in cabin pressure. That sort of thing was a bit more intense in deep space.
He managed to finish the uniquely awkward dressing maneuver just in time for the autopilot to kick into FTL. One would think that such a thing would be spectacular. Not as such. The inertial inhibitor wiped out any semblance of the sensation of speed. No lurch backward, no pressing into the seat. It had to, or the pilot would be a thin film of organic matter long before the ship even made it to half the speed of light. And as for the sights? Well, everything in the view field took an abrupt shift toward blue, then violet, and then on up into ultraviolet, then into the various levels of high energy radiation, which was summarily blocked by the ship to prevent, among other things, death. Some pilots used view screens that would drop the radiation frequency down to viewable levels, probably the same sort of people who get a kick out of listening to bat sonar. They would get a groovy stretched out light show that, in reality, was a long way behind them. Lex preferred to nap or poke at a casual game on the slidepad until he reached the first stop.
Back in the skies over Golana, an aging but well kept ship, military in design, was maneuvering to dock with a communications pylon. In an earlier age it might have been called a satellite, and in truth that’s all it was, but when things become commonplace, people find the need to come up with more specific names. Just as cars would come to be called coupes and convertibles and roadsters and hatchbacks depending on their shape, satellites earned descriptions like pylon or wheel or hub. Com-pylons had taken the place of cell towers once humanity had developed the need to stay connected on a globe-to-globe scale. Hand held or vehicle mounted devices would communicate to a pylon. From there, small bundles of quantum entangled particles would, with a little super-scientific prodding, transmit data via their matched pairs over virtually any distance instantaneously. Pylons scattered along all mapped transit routes meant that any slidepad in mapped space could communicate with any other one, given enough hops.
The quantum communication, aside from thumbing its nose at relativistic physics by transmitting information faster than the speed of light, was subject to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. Physicists liked to define this with fancy equations that featured letters from three different alphabets, but to the layman it meant that it was impossible to observe the data without altering it, thus making the communication absolutely secure as long as the connection was direct. Any wireless steps or repeater relays spoiled the effect by at least briefly requiring it to be decoded to a less secure form. Thus, if you were the sort who required utter secrecy, you needed to dock directly, and very few had access. This man was among them.
Fingers tapped out a long sequence of digits on an access screen, then swiped their prints for authentication. A screen read off a list of connection steps. A moment later, a voice crackled across the com speaker in the ship.
“William Trent,” said the voice, a terse introduction that managed to communicate with remarkable clarity how much of a waste of time he considered the call to be.
“Agent Fisk reporting. I found the leak,” said the mysterious ship’s pilot.
“About time,” Trent barked.
“There’s a problem,” warned Fisk.
“What is it?” fumed Trent, murder in his tone.
“It may not have been contained. I did a trace on network activity. She did some research. Freelancers.”
Fisk spoke in short, precise bursts, like machine gun fire. He delivered exactly what information needed to be delivered with the sort of efficiency you only get in soldiers and butlers.
“Damn it!” Trent replied.
“Narrowed it down to one. Found surveillance of a hand-off. Package contents unknown. It looks like he is off planet already.”
“Find him. Get it back. This doesn’t get any farther. Not now.”
“What about her?”
“If she sprung one leak, she can spring another. We can’t have that. Take care of it.”
“What level of authorization do I have in this matter?”
“Take. Care. Of. It.”
“Acknowledged.”
The communication was severed. Fisk pulled away from the pylon and pulled up his surveillance notes. His primary target had a short trip to a neighboring star system planned that day on a commuter shuttle. That would be simple enough. Some collateral damage, but no trail to follow. As for his new secondary target, the freelancer... That might require a more personal approach.
Seven hours, forty winks, and twelve thousand colored bricks later, the view outside the window made the slide back toward red and into visibility. It wasn’t the destination. That would be the better part of a week and a few dozen jumps away. This was just the interstellar equivalent of a strip mall, close enough to a VectorCorp route that even a damaged ship could limp to it from there, but far enough that there was no chance of being forced to pay licensing fees. Lex liked to make at least one or two stops in a place like this along the way. They had real bathrooms and real food. The same could not be said of h
is ship, which made do with... substitutes.
The bathroom was replaced with a bedpan sized contraption officially called a waste reprocessor, but more familiarly dubbed a turd burner. It converted human byproduct into a chemically pure compound that could be dropped off for processing into explosives or fertilizer or some such. More importantly, it didn’t stink and took up less space. Food came in the form of whatever preservative-ridden, vitamin-fortified, partially hydrogenated, high calorie snack was on sale when you ran out last time. Currently it was something that claimed to be pepperoni protein bars and tasted vaguely like spicy sawdust. It wasn’t difficult to understand why food cooked on a griddle and a bathroom with actual toilets would be nice before a week of travel.
Like most small space stations, this place was shaped like a massive wagon wheel, spinning fast enough to give the approximation of gravity. Lex hailed the landing coordinator and negotiated a spot in one of the docking ports along the inside rim. All he had to do was get in the same ballpark as the dock and tractor beams did the rest of the work. In no time the hiss of artificial atmosphere let him know that it was safe to open the hatch and head inside.
There – along with a couple of convenience stores, hardware stores, and repair shops - was a greasy spoon. That would do just fine. He took a seat and waved over the waitress behind the counter. She had the sort of dead eyed gaze that made it clear that she wasn’t the talkative type, so he pointed out the three egg special on the menu.
“Over easy,” he said.
The eggs were in front of him quickly enough to make him wonder if they were someone else’s order, but that suited him fine. While he shoveled them down, Lex decided to take advantage of the high bandwidth data connection advertized on the menu to pull down some messages and entertainment for the trip. He activated his slidepad’s wireless, loaded up his download queue, and slipped it into his pocket to wait for it to finish. Five minutes later, barely six gigs of data had been pulled down.
“High bandwidth my ass,” Lex muttered, mopping up the remains of his eggs with the remains of his toast, “Hey, you guys take chips, right?”
The surly woman behind the counter shook her head slowly and continued scraping at the griddle.
“I see. Then we’ve got a little problem, because that’s all I’ve got,” he said.
She thrust a finger toward the opposite side of the establishment, where another patron was just finishing up with a video poker machine. If casino chips were the new cash, poker kiosks were the new ATMs. He sat down and plunked a few of the tokens he’d been paid as advance into the machine. All he really needed to do was cash out his winnings into his bank account, but he always played a few hands, just on the off chance that a flush would make breakfast free.
His slidepad chirped just as he’d failed to get jacks or better for the third straight time. He dug it out with one hand while pulling up the cash-out menu with the other. Once the credits were in his account, he looked at the notification bar. It was mostly increasingly angry bill collectors, but one message was from someone with the screen name NixMix66Six. He tapped it, expecting spam.
“Trevor, Get back to me.”
It was a voice only message, but the voice was vaguely familiar and conjured a fairly specific image. It was the clipped, nasally voice of a woman who thought a lot more of herself than anyone else did. Normally Lex didn’t want to deal with those types. His agent had been one. His lawyer had been one. Neither had served him particularly well when the going got rough. But she’d called him Trevor. People who wanted money or to put him in jail called him Mr. Alexander. Most everyone else called him Lex or T-Lex. The only people who called him by his first name were those who knew him through family or Michella.
“Six eighty-five,” said the lady behind the counter, as he walked past.
“Hey, so you can speak,” Lex quipped, sweeping his pad over the paypad built into the counter, “We’ll call it an even thousand. Remember me next time, will you?”
It was a good policy to make yourself known as a big tipper in places like this. You never knew when it would come in handy. He made the customary trip to the restroom, which turned out to be filthy enough to make the turd burner downright attractive by comparison. From there he made his way to the docking bay. He tossed the attendant some money for fuel and climbed back inside. The message from NixMix had come in only twenty minutes before he’d arrived. It was probably a safe bet he could get her if he tried. After a few moments of considering it, he shrugged and pulled up the contact info. The connection negotiated for a few seconds, and he was connected. This time it was a video feed that answered.
She was a woman in her late twenties, hair streaked with hot pink highlights. A stud graced one nostril, and a handful of rings perforated one ear. Her clothes ran the gamut from black leather to pink vinyl to white latex, along with virtually any other material but cloth. It was all layered over each other in haphazard flaps and pleats and held on with too many buckles and zippers. The overall effect was hideous and unusual, standard uniform of the pathological non-conformist. She was slightly overweight and, from the looks of it, very pissed.
“Oh, you,” Lex said flatly.
Evidently NixMix66Six was Michella’s older sister Nicole. In most families it was the youngest or the middle child that was the rebel. In the Modane clan, it was the oldest. Nicole was the kind of person who spent most of a given conversation trying to convince you why your every action was the result of brainwashing by a few dozen different sinister Powers That Be and Corporate Manipulators that wanted to tell you how to live your life. The rest of the conversation consisted of her telling you how to live your life. She’d always hated Lex, and the day Michella had dumped him was the happiest day of her life.
“That’s right, me, you little sh-”
“Thanks so much for calling, Nicole. Do keep in touch,” he said, reaching to end the call.
“No, wait, it’s about Michella!”
“… Okay, what?”
“She told me you were working with organized crime again. Is that true?”
Lex sighed angrily, “Not that you’ll believe me, but no. Like I told her yesterday, I gave Nick Patel a ride and he gave me a massive tip. That’s it. Why the hell would YOU call and ask that?”
Now it was her turn to sigh.
“Have you been out with anyone since her?”
“I’ve had a fling or two.”
It was exactly two, but she didn’t need to know that.
“She’s been with eleven. Most of them don’t get past the second date.”
“Well, she’s winning, then, isn’t she?”
“It is because of you, you asshole. She isn’t over you.”
“Well she could have fooled me, Nicole. The only time she spoke to me in the last two months was to dump me again.”
“You hurt her pretty bad, Trevor. She loved you. After you got mixed up with the mob it tore her up, but it didn’t change anything. You should hear her whenever she visits. Last week she was talking about how you had this really down to earth job and how you were working another one on the side. She was thinking of getting back together.”
“She’d said something about keeping track of me. How much does she actually know?”
“Plenty. She’s been watching you pretty close.”
“… That’s creepy.”
“Then that mobster thing happened and she came crying on my shoulder. I had to see if you were really that big of an idiot.”
“Well I’m not. And what’s the big deal anyway?”
“Have you ever heard of Carlito Rodrigo?”
“No, who was that? Lucky boyfriend number seven?”
“Look him up, asshole.”
With that, she closed the connection.
“The whole effing family is out of their minds!” Trevor muttered through clenched teeth. He took out his frustration on the control panel, hammering the buttons to disengage and set the course for his next sprint.
&nbs
p; Frustration and concentration don’t mix very well. A man who gets angry tends to forget things he would never forget otherwise. The bad news was that getting a ship set for an FTL sprint wasn’t the sort of thing you could afford to forget to do correctly. The good news was that there were all sorts of safeguards in place to prevent you from forgetting to do something you are supposed to do, so Lex didn’t manage to get himself killed. Unfortunately there isn’t anything to remind you to do things you aren’t supposed to do.
Every ship is required, by law, to have a transponder broadcasting a unique identifier. It gave rescue crews something to home in on if you ended up adrift and radio silent. It also gave the authorities something to track. Thus it was a handy thing to turn off if you were going to be doing something of questionable legality. But with no useful reminders, and an awful lot on his mind, he forgot to reach under the dash and do the magic knock that would switch it off. And so Lex streaked off into the black depths of space, his transponder blaring his location out, loud and clear.
Chapter 5
The sprint was supposed to be a 9 hour stretch, so Lex had set his alarm and decided to catch up on his sleep. Just under 8 hours later, a loud beeping noise jarred him awake. It wasn’t the alarm. At least, not the one he’d set. Most of the things sensors rely upon are far too slow to do any good when a ship is moving faster than the speed of light. Gravity was on the short list of things that weren’t. It wasn’t that it was fast. It is just that it is always there, tugging and pulling at everything else in the universe. The gravity sensor was used in FTL to let you know when something moving about the same speed as you was getting too close. Handy for ships in established routes to keep from bumping into each other. It shouldn’t ever make a peep during a sprint. As such, when it started blaring, it had his attention.