Embrace the Romance

by S. E. Smith

  Rik’s star-freighter drifted into the massive cradle of a dock. Meanwhile Rik reviewed his assignment, using his electronic notebook. The manager of Star Corner Station was one Davend Tattujayan, a person whose gender was indeterminate from the name crammed into a constricted box in the audit template. The manager was identified as Goyan. That came as no surprise. Goya was a long-colonized planet with hereditary spacegoing guilds.

  At a bored wave from a crewwoman in a uniform coverall, Rik exited the star-freighter. He was the only passenger, the rest of what the freighter had carried being cargo destined for the Station. He had a copy of the manifest and had personally inspected the cargo, consisting of analytic instruments, machine replacement parts, food supplies, and personal packages for Station crew. The star-freighter would proceed to take on cargo in the form of purified ores. That was almost all that the Station contributed to the rest of the universe these days. Fine, if it was enough. And well enough accounted for.

  Somebody from the Station’s management should have met him at the dock. That no one did made him wonder if his reception had been delayed to give someone time to hide something. He glanced around. His expert eye could assess any space place for locations in which to hide contraband. Just here in the station dock, he saw a few interestingly nondescript convex surfaces, plus a hatch not located anywhere that made structural sense, but in a suggestive proximity to some side-loading machinery. As to the rest of the station—the looming, crevassed, partly deserted, much-damaged and patched bulk of it. . . . Good gods, Rik thought. You could hide entire starships in this place.

  His investigative instincts stirred.

  A young man rushed into the dock. “Auditor Gole? I’m Mattiz-Kol Sarpov, Station Manager Tattujayan’s secretary.” The secretary’s lank brown hair stuck out—a predictable consequence of spingravity and the reason Rik kept his own hair short. The name and the accent identified the secretary as a being from Faxe, the principal planet of the Faxen Union, as was Rik himself. Good. Absent cultural differences, a callow secretary could be an open book to Rik. “The Manager will be delayed for some time, so I’ll show you to—”

  Rik interrupted. “The audit protocol is that I meet with the Manager immediately upon my arrival.”

  The secretary gave Rik an odd look, waved for Rik to come with him, and set off at a run.

  Davendaya Tattujayan had known something like this could happen and dreaded the day it did. She just hadn’t known exactly where it would be—in what storage bin or locker, undercompartment, sealed tank, service chase, or locked gallery in the Station. It had turned out to be here: below the old military materials depot. The depot was obsolete, closed, locked, and highly restricted. She had a master key in the event of an emergency. She had declared an emergency when the floor of the depot sagged into the corridor under it, dropping a huge mass of corrosive red—stuff.

  The stuff was still falling in thick red clots. The leading edge of the mass was creeping toward the living quarters for Station personnel in this sector. Those personnel were being evacuated, shift sleepers roused out of their bunks with shouts and shoulders shaken.

  Ops Chief Jax Trover scrambled down the nearest ladder. He handed her back the master key and reported, “There’s a row of huge containers placarded ‘do not drop,’ ‘do not strike with sharp instruments,’ ‘do not expose to water’ and ‘do not eject into space.’ Some of the containers are bulging, they are! The one on the end fell out of the rack and split open. Only half of what was in it has leaked out so far!”

  Daya gritted her teeth. The Station flexed under gravitational tidal forces from its proximity to the metal ore planet. Centuries of that must have weakened brackets and now let that container fall out. “Does the signage say what is recommended to do?”

  “No.”

  Service Chief Romeo Ito ran up with the bladder of water she’d sent him for. Now she wondered how good an idea that was. Do not expose to water—because water would neutralize the stuff or because it reacted badly to water? There was one way to find out. But it best be done with care. Romeo was about to empty the bladder onto the stuff. Daya put a cautionary hand on his arm. “Start with just a little.”

  Romeo flung a few ounces of water onto the red stuff.

  Where it felt the touch of water, the red stuff exploded, spattering his left boot. The spatters instantly ate holes in the boot. He wrenched the boot off, but not before his skin felt the acid touch. He stripped off his sock to frantically rub the acid off his skin. The sock started smoldering in his fingers.

  He hurled the sock into the red stuff. The sock burst into flame.

  As though incited, the red stuff crawled faster. Daya took a step back, her arms outflung in front of Jax and Romeo. In her native language she thought, The Eye of Fate has noticed me today. She felt dread edged with anger. She would not just succumb to what ill Fate intended—but what could she do?

  She heard another set of running feet. This time it was Brina Trover bringing a heavily loaded bag. “The tailings you wanted,” Brina panted.

  “First—what do we know about this hideous stuff?”

  Jax answered, “The floor of the depot gave way where there were composite joists. Anything organic that the stuff touches—meaning plastics or composites or skin—it causes to burn. It explodes on contact with water and makes acid residue.”

  Damnation! Much of Star Corner Station was plastic or composite. And the Station was laced with pipes that channeled water for environmental control, radiation absorption, and sewage flow.

  “But it doesn’t react with metals.”

  Daya thought fast. “The ore tailings are anhydrous, inorganic, and unoxidized, with a lot of surface area in the powdered fraction. And it’s the only thing we have in an unlimited amount to fight this stuff. Sprinkle some on.”

  Brina did so.

  Nothing happened.

  Brina dumped the whole bag of tailings on the leading edge of the red stuff.

  The pile of tailings blocked the red stuff. Red puddles tried to ooze around the tailings. Daya said, “With enough tailings, we can make a dam that holds it back. We’ll need a tailings truck brought to the nearest haulway. Then enough bags—or anything else we can carry tailings in—and enough people to make a supply line from the haulway to here!”

  The supply line quickly formed up, including several just-woken shift sleepers still in their underwear. Daya felt a stab of fierce pride. In Star Corner Station she’d been given a mixed and mismatched bag of yarns and knitted them into the fabric of a good crew. She’d be damned before she let anything bad happen to the crew or to the Station.

  Minutes later a second bag full of tailings was flung against the slow red tide. Some of the tailings landed on top of the stuff, and the lurid red of it turned rusty. It solidified into a scab of sorts.

  “Good!” Jax exclaimed. “We can make a wall in front of it to contain it and then suppress it, we can!”

  The station doctor, Anahita Lee, dashed up to help. Daya had her begin first aid for the injuries that were starting to accumulate, starting with Romeo’s foot.

  A steady stream of tailings flew at the leading edge of the stuff. It hissed—maybe there were traces of water or oxides in the tailings. All in all, the red stuff acted alive enough to make Daya’s skin crawl. But the tailings stymied the stuff. The line of people delivering bags of tailings stretched as those at the front advanced. Daya needed more people.

  Mattiz-Kol came running up with an unfamiliar man—a tall and fit-looking one.

  “You two fill in there!” Daya ordered them.

  Brina was at the head of the supply line, dumping bags and boxes and buckets—by now all kinds of containers had been pressed into service—onto the face of the stymied, hissing mass of red stuff. The finest of the tailings powdered the air. Pebble-sized tailings rolled loose on the floor.

  Brina pivoted. Her booted foot slipped on the pebbles underfoot. She fell hard onto a puddle of stuff that had slyly oozed throu
gh a pile of rocks in the dam.

  Her coverall cuff caught fire. She yelled.

  The new man grabbed a large bag of tailings out of Mattiz’ hands and dumped it on Brina’s leg, smothering the fire. Then he yanked her to safety. Seconds later the doctor was cutting off the leg of her coverall and working her boot off.

  Daya crouched to put a hand on Brina’s shoulder. “How bad?”

  “Bad enough but no permanent harm done,” said the doctor.

  “Thanks to him.” Brina gestured at the new man.

  Behind them, it sounded as though tailings had proven equal to the job. People were pointing out weak spots in the dam and another treacherous puddle. Daya let out a sharp breath. “Thank you,” she told the new man. “And you are?”

  Mattiz-Kol stood at a kind of startled attention and announced, “Faxen Interstellar Financial Authority Auditor Rik Gole!”

  The sudden silence was only broken by the hissing of the red stuff. Then an entire section of the corridor ceiling fell down—fortunately squarely on the red stuff—with a crash.

  So that was Manager Tattujayan. She had paler skin than most Goyans—a superficial resemblance to the Faxen Union’s Albioni ethnic minority, which was a cesspool of Disunion terrorists. Other than that, Rik liked the look of her: a dark-haired, compactly built woman who knew how to take action.

  With the crisis under control, Mattiz showed Rik to his quarters. Rik showered and changed clothes. Mattiz reappeared to show Rik to the servery for supper. The servery smelled appetizing. That was good not just because Rik was hungry but also because it was a sign of a well-adjusted space place to harbor good cooks.

  Over savory noodle bowls, the Station personnel excitedly discussed today’s incident, but no one still had dusty hair and coveralls. “We always freshen up for dinner,” Mattiz explained. “In a remote place like this, it’s easy for people to get space-slack.”

  Rik nodded. There was another sign of good management. Tattujayan might be dishonest, but she was not incompetent.

  Her idea of fresh clothes turned out to be Steppe-Goyan tribal dress—a heavy, tailored red tunic and skirt with elaborate white trim, and white fur boots. The skirt fit well and hung properly—better than Mattiz’ hair. And red looked good on her. She had an interesting face with rather severe features. Wearing black, she’d have looked like a funeral in progress. The red set off her pale skin and dark hair. She had an energetic quality, an almost electric energy.

  Midway through the meal, the Service Chief—a Wendisan named Romeo Ito, one of those injured in today’s incident—stood up to make an announcement. “Keepers, Trovers, and Faxens—” he bowed toward Mattiz and Rik “—and Manager Tattujayan, we had a war today and won!”

  Everyone cheered.

  “Our next scheduled war is the day after tomorrow, rule set mixed melee, and may the best team win!”

  “What?” Rik asked Mattiz.

  “Do you know about the war games of Wendis?”

  Rik did. Wendis was a spinning city-state in the stars between the Faxen Union and Goya. Rik’s business had never taken him there. But he’d heard of the games. “They re-enact wars from old Earth.”

  “Romeo is a Weaponsmaster—that’s a high rank in Wendisan wargaming. The sides are Keepers, meaning the service staff, and Trovers, the Goyan guilders and others who operate the plant that processes ore from the metal core planet—its name is Trove.” Mattiz warmed to his subject. “We don’t have a good stage for an open-air battle because Star Corner Station doesn’t have wide pressurized floor areas. Wendis does, and at this year’s Ascendance Fair they re-enacted one of the most famous battles on all of old Earth—the one called Normandy Invasion! Here, we’re going to stage a firefight in a deserted village. Mixed melee means weapons from any historical period are allowed.”

  Space station inhabitants usually entertained themselves with—in order of frequency—vids, games, sex, gambling, and recreational drugs. All such entertainments were fine if they didn’t involve administrative money. Personally, Rik enjoyed the availability and variety of sex in space places. It was one of the distinct pluses of his occupation. He’d had some very enjoyable encounters, albeit not with administrators he was investigating. He caught himself thinking that thought and it startled him. But yes. Rik looked around to confirm his impression. Tattujayan was the most attractive woman in the hall. “Is your Manager a Guild-Goyan?”

  “Oh no, she’s not with any Goyan space guilds. She upholds Goya’s stake in the Station, though. There’s Goya, Wendis, the Faxen Union and other stakeholders too, I think she’ll tell you about them.”

  Rik’s ears pricked. If there were covert stakeholders in Star Corner Station, it would be news to the Faxen Interstellar Financial Authority!

  As though she sensed herself being talked about, Tattujayan came over to Rik’s table. “It’s Station evening, but freighters tend to arrive in ship morning, so I assume it feels like midday to you. You may wish to come to my office for the private conference that was supposed to occur upon your arrival.” Without chaos unfolding around them, Rik noticed that she spoke formally and with an accent. The Goyan dialect of Alliant wasn’t her native language.

  “I’d like that,” he said blandly. Out of the corner of his eye, he took in the curve of her hips and thighs under the skirt, and the smoothness of the skin above the red trim on her boots. The white fur looked real, not like cheap Wendis-fair imitation fur. Her outfit might be worth most of her salary for a year. Very interesting.

  The office she shared with her secretary and her Service Chief turned out to be cramped and Spartan. Unlike certain administrators Rik had encountered whose expensive tastes screamed from walls and corners, the décor consisted of a goldfish tank and a very large and untidy plant. The plant overflowed one end of the Service Chief’s desk, beside the fish tank. Tattujayan flicked a dangling tendril of the plant out of the fish tank. It was always interesting what people would nervously tidy up with an auditor looking over their shoulder.

  Tattujayan turned toward Rik with her arms crossed. “Thank you for your help today. As it happens, the incident illustrates my management philosophy, which is the diligent management of resources. The best resource of all is the hands and brains of good people.”

  Rik nodded approvingly. “Let me introduce my philosophy as well. As an interstellar auditor, I’m here to ask the right questions. As I see it, my job traces its lineage all the way to ancient Rome in Earth, where an official Quaestor was one who asked questions. And my purpose is to get accurate answers to the right questions—nothing more, but nothing less. May I ask your full name for my notes? My audit template has a box too small for all of yours.”

  “Davendaya Tattujayan.” She spelled it. “The accent is on first syllables like ancient Finnish, and the syllables are meaningful elements like names derived from ancient Sanskrit in India on Earth.”

  Amused, he said, “I wasn’t aware that Goyans had such complicated names.”

  She retorted, “I thought Faxens always had two first names.”

  His amusement vanished. “There aren’t enough Rik Goles for me to be confused with others.” His mind shied away from the name that was his father’s, that he had repudiated, that no longer mattered to him. “By the way, may I compliment you on your Goyan costume and ask how your skirt stays in place?”

  “It isn’t costume. I came from the Goyan Steppe. The hem has weights that make the material hang suitably in spingravity. And that’s one.”

  Processing what she’d said—he’d never met a Steppe-Goyan, but he’d heard about them, and that explained how she could wear tribal clothing without spending a fortune on it—her last sentence registered on him. “One?”

  “Totally unwarranted question. I will give you three of those, and no more.”

  Rik felt his sexual interest stir. Tattujayan was not conventionally pretty. But she was striking, intelligent and spirited. She was the kind of woman who most attracted him.

  Her
honesty remained to be seen, he sternly reminded himself. His assignment was more important than his sexual whims.

  She handed him an interface disk. “Here is the key to the Station financial records. I will of course answer any and all questions about those.”

  Sometimes Fate winks. It certainly had today, Daya thought. That auditor—whose visit came as a most unpleasant surprise—was an attractive man. And he had effectively helped with the emergency with the red stuff. Had he been any other kind of specialist, she would have wanted to know him better, starting immediately. Unfortunately, he was not to be trusted. To be more exact, his government was not to be trusted. As to him, that depended on how much of a creature of his state he was.

  At Station midnight, Daya let herself into core of one of the Station’s service spines. She climbed down a long ladder and ducked into the unused service chase that happened to be a secret and unmonitored way into what had once been one of the Station’s passenger rings. Exactly what it was now—it was better not to know. She had never entered the ring herself, just gone as far as the anteroom of it. She entered the anteroom by pressing her hand against the featureless door at the end of the chase.

  She found the Angel named Mercury waiting for her.

  The Angels had once been human. For mysterious reasons and by an agency unclear to the rest of humanity, the Angels had changed into something else, something not quite human, adapted for low-gravity environments. They were not to be trusted. That fact, unlike the problematic auditor and his allegiance, was long since proven. Yet the Angels had their uses, and Daya knew how to not trust them.

  Mercury was fine-boned and androgynous and wore a close-fitting coverall of pale blue material. Over Mercury’s shoulder were a pair of diaphanous wings, tightly furled, almost invisible in the dim light of the antechamber. Mercury got to the point. “Are you here to buy knowledge?”

  Daya shrugged. “Just information, if you have it.” Like everyone from the Steppe of Goya, Daya knew how trade worked. You downplayed whatever you desired.