“Donal!”
“Up here.”
I follow his voice to the nose of the ship, and bark my shin on one of the anti-grav gliders. Supplies roll hither and yon. I scramble after bug repellent, rolls of duct tape, air fresheners, a twelve-pack of inspirational posters— “Donal, you bought inspirational posters? That’s a waste of money. You should have just bought a violin.”
He used to play the fiddle. Fecking gifted he is too. We’d have some grand ceilis when he was in the mood, with Shaka joining in on the buckets. But his fiddle got smashed in the mud of Suckass.
“Violins are expensive,” he says from somewhere up in the air. “Inspirational posters are cheap.”
“Yeah, that’s my point.” I move out from under the nose of the ship, and crane my head back. High above, his headlamp glints over the edge of one of the anti-grav gliders. “What the feck are you doing?”
The glider descends. It’s just a flat platform with an anti-grav engine underneath and a handle at the back. Donal’s standing in the middle. “Come here a minute.”
I step on, and smell paint. The glider rises back up to the nose of the Hellraiser.
But she is no longer the Hellraiser. Donal has painted a new name on her, in sloppy glow-in-the-dark blue letters. The paint runs into the pocks in her steel nose shield.
I read her new name, and sigh.
“What do you think?” Donal says.
“People used to ask me where the Skint Idjit got her name from. I’d tell them that’s no mystery. The Captain named her after himself.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard that before. So this time I decided to name her after you.”
The ship’s new name is: Intergalactic Bogtrotter.
“That’s brutal, Donal. I’m never going to live that down.”
“I was thinking about Muck Savage, so consider yourself lucky.”
“I’m not objecting to ‘bogtrotter.’ It’s intergalactic. Inter means between, so it should be intragalactic. The Railroad doesn’t go to the bloody Andromeda Galaxy.”
“That we’re aware of.”
“Jesus, I hope not. The problem is now everyone in this galaxy will think either you don’t know English, or you can’t spell.”
He is silent for a minute. “Well, it’ll hardly be the first time the rest of you have had to pay for my mistakes,” he says quietly.
That is when I know I’m staying. I suppose I knew it all along, really.
“Feck off,” I say, giving him a punch. “You can tell Harriet and the rest we’re not selling.”
I’ll just stick around until he’s back on his feet. It won’t be forever. There’ll still be planets on the market when … when we’ve made $50 million, and then another few hundred million on top of that … oh Jesus, I’ve never been in a hole this deep.
“There’ll be jobs to pick up,” Donal says. “Even if it’s just cargo runs. We’ll pay off the bloodsuckers, and then we’ll start saving for a new exploration trip. One big A-tech find, and our worries will be over!”
He even manages to convince the others that this is a possibility. When Donal is on form, he could talk a slug into a salt-shaker. But faces lengthen again over the next few days as jobs are not to be found. Gordon discovers that Goldman Sachs has put the word out—we are their prey and no one else’s. Even the big tech companies are scared of the investment banks. They won’t hire us for so much as a cargo run, and meanwhile Donal and Harriet max out their credit cards paying for repairs, and we still owe the bloodsuckers $50 million plus interest.
The South Africans start openly checking the want ads.
And I do what I knew all along I’d have to do.
I go back to the Four Seasons.
Finian’s hosting a mob wives’ kaffeeklatch this morning, at least that’s the impression I get from all the fur and black-lace cleavage bouncing around.
“Are you still adding ships to your fleet?”
CHAPTER 3
“Sit down, Fletch,” Finian says. “How are things?”
I hitch my arse on the foot of the circular bed where Finian’s sprawling in rock-star style, shirt open, medallions glittering in his white chest fur. On the other side of the bed, several women are using Ruby as a jewellery model. He smiles and poses as they drape him with trinkets.
“Regarding the fleet,” Finian says. “I’m at full strength at this point.”
“Ah. Gotcha.”
I’m gathering myself to leave when he adds, “But we still need a supply ship.”
The auld sadist.
“Would this be a partnership?” I say. Finian knows we’ve got no funds to kick in. “Or a work for hire sort of thing?”
“Work for hire,” he says. “No profit-sharing, but I’d be willing to offer a 10% completion bonus.”
For sheer capitalistic ruthlessness, there’s no investment banker can touch a pirate.
“In that case, we’re in,” I say. I don’t need to confirm with Donal. We have no other options.
We hash out the details. My attention wanders. I keep looking at the women.
“Is it true what I hear he’s called that ship?” Finian says. “Intergalactic Bogtrotter?”
“It’s memorable, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, but it’s spelled wrong. Unless he’s found a spur of the Railroad going to the Andromeda Galaxy …” Finian chortles.
I slide off the bed and edge around the groups of chattering women.
“I need to know your cargo capacity to the inch,” Finian yells after me. “I’ve got a powerful lot of supplies to pack in there.”
I nod and lift a hand in farewell. I am focused on one of the woman, who is high-stepping ahead of me, towing an anti-grav suitcase.
I catch up with her outside the elevator. “Hello, Imogen, long time no see.”
She frowns at me blankly.
“The Pravda? My friend was incapacitated? You gave us a lift into orbit?”
“Oh my God,” says Imogen Kincaid. A expression of mild panic tightens her features. She stabs the elevator button in a vain attempt to get away quicker.
When I met Imogen last year, she was driving a space taxi for the Bratva—the hard men who run Arcadia. It’s not really accurate to call them the mob. They mostly work as enforcers for the tech companies.
Imogen double-crossed me, trying to retrieve a certain item the Bratva were after. I had the last laugh, however. The last I saw of her, she was hot-rodding it away from the Skint Idjit, with two Bratva pathetically tumbling after her on re-entry parachutes.
Now she’s making an early exit from one of Finian’s networking parties and it can’t be because of me; she clearly didn’t recognize me at all until I said hello. It’s nice to know I’ve the kind of face that women remember.
Then again, I almost didn’t recognize her, either. The cute geek-girl bob has turned into a trendy geometrical cut, the unisex smock has been replaced by a mob-wife ensemble of minidress and fur jacket, and she’s wearing make-up. High heels bring her stature almost up to my shoulder.
She nearly falls over on the heels, hurrying into the elevator. I catch her. “Steady. What’s in the suitcase?”
It is almost too big to fit into the elevator.
“It’s a safe,” she says witheringly.
The floor indicator lights tick down. I can smell her perfume.
“So the last time we met, you were driving a space taxi.” I’m desperately trying to think how to not let her get away. “You were an ace pilot. Really the best I’ve seen.” It may sound like I’m buttering her up, but she flew that taxi with fearlessness and precision, a rare combination. Anyway she’s much better than me. I hate piloting. “Are you not doing that anymore?”
She pivots to face me. “You completely fucked that up for me, OK? I got scapegoated for the whole thing. It was like ‘Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.’ You would not believe how many people are waiting in line for jobs as taxi drivers.”
Actually, I would believe it
, having spent the last few days covertly checking the want ads myself. I got as far as filling in an application for a scout job before resigning myself to my fate.
“Still, it doesn’t look like you’re hurting,” I say.
We squeeze out into the mirrored foyer. She wraps the strap of her safe around her wrist, and does that sigh-snort thing only American women can manage. And Canadian ones. She’s Canadian, mustn’t forget that. They don’t like being mistaken for Americans. “Ucccch. I’m selling bling to rich bitches who are so buuusy, they can’t even make time to go shopping.” She puts on a shrill voice. “’Oh, that’s adorable on you!’ Like, not, you heifer. Seriously, I’m prostituting my soul here.” We pass out into Reservoir Square. “But the commission is OK.”
Imogen stops on the sidewalk, scanning the traffic.
“Sounds like a gas,” I say. “Who’s supplying the product?”
A lumpy lad, sat sideways on a Ducatti at the corner, looks up from his iPhone and waves. He is wearing sunglasses and a Lokomotiv Moscow hoodie.
“Meet the new boss, same as the old boss,” Imogen says bleakly. “There’s no one else to work for on this planet.”
Hoodie Man gets off his bike and lumbers towards us.
“Oh yes, there is,” I say. “You just met him.”
“Huh?”
“Do you even know whose hotel suite you were just in?”
“Oh, the old dude? You know who he reminded me of? Have you ever seen The King of Wolf 1061c? It’s like that actor got old and fat and grew a beard.” She giggles. “Totally fucking cool. He bought some of my stuff.”
Hoodie Man is nearly on top of us.
“He’s organizing a big expedition,” I say urgently. “Are you interested?”
“Oh, an exploration trip?” She wrinkles her nose. “I’m really not the thrills and spills type.”
“No thrills, hopefully no spills, just tagging along behind with the supplies. There’s a 10% completion bonus.”
Hoodie Man glares at me from behind his sunglasses. He snaps his fingers for Imogen to surrender the safe.
“Hmm,” she says. “Where to?”
CHAPTER 4
“Omega Centauri,” says Donal. “Omega fecking Centauri!”
He has just come back from his meeting with Finian. We are prepping the Intergalactic Bogtrotter for launch. This is like doing a thousand-piece jigsaw in three dimensions. It’s ridiculous the amount of stuff Finian wants us to take.
And now we know why.
“Omega Centauri is four point one kiloparsecs from here,” Donal says. “Twice as far as we went up the Beta Aurigae Spur!” He cackles at the thought. The stars are back in his eyes, and I suppose I should be pleased, but dark premonitions clamor at the back of my mind. There’s only one reason for going that far out on the Railroad, bypassing any number of unexplored spurs closer to Earth, and that is to make mischief.
“Who’s this?” Donal says, focusing on the poncho-clad figure at my side.
“Ah yes,” I grin. “Meet Imogen Kincaid, our new pilot.”
“Nice to meet you,” Donal says doubtfully.
We climb the stairs. From the 40-foot height of the airlock, I spy a flock of water tankers driving our way to pump their contents into the Bogtrotter’s tanks. Why is Finian wanting us to take so much water? It’s a given in the exploration business that water is one thing you don’t need to take much of. The Railroad only goes to habitable planets. Habitable planets, by definition, have water. When you run low, you stop and fill up. If you’re a halfway-thorough explorer, you’re stopping at every planet anyway. What’s the old devil got in mind?
On the other side of the airlock, we remove our masks and outerwear. Donal takes in Imogen’s crooked smile, her pretty brown eyes, and as much as can be seen of her curvaceous figure given that she’s gone back to her own fashion tastes. Today it’s a shapeless pinafore thing with striped fleece leggings. Donal smiles and shakes her hand. “Welcome aboard.”
Harriet drags her away for the guided tour. “Is that your only bag? It looks like a safe, what’ve you got in there?”
As soon as they are out of earshot, Donal pulls his hair. “I’m happy for you, Fletch, I really am. But would she not settle for a different job? How about treecat wrangler? We need one of those.”
I consider correcting his assumption that Imogen is my girlfriend, and decide to leave it. “Pilot it is, Donal. She’s good. You wait till you see her sub-orbital moves.”
“But we’ve already got a pilot! What’s Kenneth going to say?”
We arrive on the bridge and there is Kenneth himself, in his mohawked and metallic-tattooed glory, eating instant ramen and watching the 2066 Eurovision finals on the navigation screen. “Ukraine’s going to walk off with it,” he greets us.
“Kenneth,” I say, “is not a pilot.”
“Huh? I am!”
“Yeah, and I’m the CEO of Goldman Sachs,” I say. “We’ve only your word for it. When we captured this ship, everyone else was dead.”
Actually, it was Finian and his Old Elephants who captured the ship, but the point stands.
“There was only you left alive, cowering on the bridge. You said you were the pilot, but where’s the proof? You’ve certainly not been in a hurry to demonstrate your skills. I flew this pig of a ship all the way here because you were conveniently never to be found when wanted.”
The loo flushes and Vanessa comes out. She plops herself defiantly on Kenneth’s lap. “OK, fine,” she says. “No, he wasn’t the pilot. Shut up, Ken. He was the cook. But there’s nothing wrong with that! Anyway, if you try and kick him off now, I’m going with him.”
Still stinging about the way I had to fill in for him, I’m about to call her bluff when Donal turns the situation around. “You were the cook? That’s fantastic! We lost our old cook back on the Beta Aurigae Spur.” Poor Trigger. He’ll never break another microwave. “Consider yourself reassigned, Ken. It’s a much more important job,” he winks.
I’m still skeptical. I’ve never yet met a cook who would willingly eat instant ramen.
Imogen comes onto the bridge with Harriet. “Did I miss something?”
“Nothing at all,” I sigh.
“Fletch, why didn’t you tell me about these little guys?!” Imogen has got a treecat on her shoulder. Harriet is also carrying her favorite, a tabby that she’s named Chairman Meow. “They’re totally adorable!”
I should pause here for a moment to tell you about these treecats. They aren’t cats, although they do look a bit feline with their triangular faces, big eyes, and lithe furred bodies. They’re about that size too. But their legs are more like a koala’s, built for climbing trees—or anything. We found them on a planet halfway up the Beta Aurigae spur.
It was the turn of our chief engineer at the time, Saul, to name the planet, and he chose Leaves-A-Million. Then when we were heading back into orbit, emptyhanded, or so we thought, half a dozen furry alien beasties tumbled out of the pantry, and Saul retrospectively changed the name of the planet to Sphinx, and named them treecats. He was a huge science fiction fan, always shoving books and films at you.
Saul used to say that sci-fi died in 2024, which was when the Interstellar Railroad zoomed out of the sky. Now the galaxy is ours, and the riches of bygone civilizations are there for the picking up. People still talk about the Star Trek dream, but the “boldly go” jokes wear thin after you’ve lost enough friends. And there’s no peace to be made with aliens when they’re all dead.
However, their loss is our gain. As we whirl out towards Omega Centauri, following the taillights of Finian’s fleet, I feel the old excitement sparking up again. Who knows what we might find out here? We’re heading for the frontier. Finian’s hinted at a mighty trove of A-tech lying in wait. Maybe he’s stumbled on the ruins of an alien empire no one’s discovered yet. Maybe he’s found live aliens—ones that have discovered the secret of eternal life!
Well, that’s not likely. But is it unrealisti
c that I might find something small enough to fit in my pocket?
Just one little find, that’s all I need.
One find that isn’t shite.
It has famously happened that more than one explorer walked straight past something a sharper-eyed soul later sold for millions. You’re looking for the secret of eternal life, say, and so you ignore the queer little cocktail umbrellas stuck in the ground everywhere, which turn out to optimize biological nitrogen fixation. That patent went for $480,000,000 to Archer Daniels Midland. You’ve got to keep an open mind.
The treecats are a classic example of what happens when you don’t keep an open mind. Saul and Harriet both insisted at first that they were sentient. Bollocks to that, says I. Calling an animal a treecat does not make it a sophont capable of telepathically bonding with a human. (I read part of that book at Saul’s urging.) It just makes it an animal with a catchy name. Harriet eventually concluded they are about as smart as colobus monkeys. But by that time, we were six hundred lightyears away, and it was too late to drop the treecats off on their home planet, even though there turned out to be seventeen of them.
“They have got one promising characteristic,” I say to Imogen, a month or so into our voyage.
“What’s that?”
The two of us are alone on the bridge. Now that she’s taken over piloting duties, I’m back to being the chief A-tech scout, which means there’s not much for me to do at the moment. There’s not much for her to do, either. The Railroad stretches away forever through the blackness of mysteriously folded space. The taillights of the Big Swinging Dick, one of Finian’s new ships, glow ahead like red eyes. Imogen touches the yoke from time to time to maintain our trim, as the Bogtrotter’s antique inertial dampeners shift 500 tons of cargo around. She’s got ‘her’ treecat, named Fluffington, on her lap.
“Nice moggy,” I croon, reaching out to tickle Fluffington behind the ears. “I think you like me really. Don’t you?” I think no such thing. This is just a pretext to move closer to Imogen, and Fluffington seems to see through it, because he nips my arm with his eight million pointy teeth. “OW!”
The COMPLETE Reluctant Adventures of Fletcher Connolly on the Interstellar Railroad: A Comedic Sci-Fi Adventure Page 11