“Donal!” I shout once more.
Someone answers me.
It is not Donal.
They aren’t even speaking English.
Two fellas charge up to us, crashing through the burnt undergrowth, yelling in Russian.
I do not speak Russian, but it’s pretty clear they’re telling me to drop the AR-15. So I do.
They wear spacesuits that may have been white before they came in here. The faces in the open visors are narrow-lipped, fleshy and hard withal. They’re mafiosi from Arcadia.
This might sound impossible to you—what the feck would mafiosi from Arcadia be doing here?—but there’s no doubt about it, because the logos on their spacesuits say SAMSUNG.
CHAPTER 16
I’ve faced death before, and more often than not it has been Big Tech security contractors on the other end of whatever weapon was involved.
That I am facing death now, and not a nice trip back to Arcadia, seems certain.
Invaluable A-tech + Samsung security contractors + independent explorers on the scene first = dead independent explorers.
I know this is how they operate, you know it, the whole galaxy knows it, it’s just that no one will call them on it because they’re all holding tech stocks.
The equation looks even bleaker when we reach the airlock, and there’s Donal, and Harriet, and Kenneth, and Vanessa, and Jasmine, all sat on the blackened grass, with two more mafiosi holding AK-47s on them.
We nod to each other—AKs pointing at your head tend to quell outpourings of joy and relief.
A few minutes later, more mafiosi plunge up with some new victims. The new lads are covered with soot, so it takes me a minute to recognize Sam. Half of his curly hair is gone. His eyes glitter blue in his grimy face.
“How’d you escape the fire?” he says to Donal, who sneers and turns away from him.
“We took refuge in the lake,” Harriet says. “The Care Bears were all doing it.”
“And the treecats?”
Harriet manages a smile. “They’re good swimmers, too.”
“They ran off when we were captured,” Vanessa says, shoulders slumped, jaw jutting, holding back tears. “Maybe they’ll learn to get along with the Care Bears someday. When we’re all dead and gone.”
“Shut up,” yell the Bratva—this is what they call themselves, the Brotherhood, believe it or not.
An hour or so passes. Finian—who’s been out cold on the grass—groans. He opens his eyes, says, “Feck,” and closes them again.
I sneak a glance at my wrist screen. One more hour until the truck goes out. It’s like waiting for the bus, except we’re waiting to die, and I can think of no way out of this, none at all.
Twenty minutes left to go. The Bratva order us to take off our spacesuits. This is it, then. Spacesuits are valuable. You don’t want punters dying in them. It’s these little efficiencies that make the stakeholders happy. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women, I don’t want to die.
Finian, awakened with a kick, sees the same thing in his crystal ball as I do. He starts to argue for our lives. He speaks a bit of Russian, which makes the Bratva listen to him, but he has to lapse into English to make his points. These are:
We haven’t broken any laws (apart from wantonly murdering dozens of people, Finian, I think to myself)
You can have the bloody A-tech
You can have the ships, too
Just give us a lift to Arcadia
I’m famous, you know
To my surprise, this last point gains some traction. The boss of the security contractors, a fat lad who wears his watch outside his spacesuit for maximum bling value, says, “Ye-esss. You are Finian ‘The Elephant’ Connolly?”
“That’s right, I am. Whatever you’ve heard about me, the truth is twice as bad.” Finian grins in his filthy beard.
“He’s a freaking legend,” Sam pipes up. “He was gonna invade us, can you believe? My mom wanted the whole fleet obliterated, but when she heard it was Finian Connolly, she was like, well, actually, no. We can’t kill him. Everyone in the business looks up to him. He’s got a fan club.”
Does Sam actually think this will help?
The boss of the subcontractors grins like a shark. “OK. We don’t disappoint fan club. You, Mr. Connolly, we take back to nice comfortable jail cell. Rest of you, hurry up! Off those suits!”
“Vot ty gde!” sings out a new voice.
A Toyota Hummingbird comes zipping along the road that runs around the inside of the dome. The Hummingbird is a flitter, but it’s not in the same class as the ones we used to carry on the Skint Idjit. This is more like a Prius with anti-grav. The tips of its stubby wings clip the burnt trees.
Hope surges when I see who’s riding in the front passenger seat, next to the Bratva chauffeur.
Imogen!
I start up off my knees, shouting her name. One of our Bratva whacks me in the head with the stock of his AK. I sink down again.
The Hummingbird settles in front of the airlock. Imogen gets out, avoiding my eyes.
Oh no.
She used to work for the Bratva on Arcadia.
Correction: she never stopped working for the Bratva, obviously.
Why, why, why am I so gullible?
All she’s ever wanted was to get her old tech job back. Now, apparently, she has. She’s wearing a skin-tight spacesuit that must have cost a fortune, and across her lovely breasts it says SAMSUNG. She opens the rear door of the Hummingbird for an older fella wearing a slate-gray spacesuit, helmet off.
It’s funny how you can always spot stackers, even when they’re thousands of lightyears away from their green, ergonomic, organic offices. It’s the glow of confidence. Gordon’s got it, Milton’s got it, even Ruby’s got it, and this fella’s got the world’s supply of it. He smooths back his wind-ruffled silvery hair and flashes a laser-whitened smile at the security contractors. He must be at least a vice-president.
Finian starts to blether again, desperately. A boot in the kidneys shuts him up.
The vice-president affects not to notice. Maybe he really doesn’t notice. Maybe he doesn’t see us at all. He’s chatting with the boss of the Bratva, and none of their talk is about the eleven people lined up on their knees, some out of their spacesuits, some half-disrobed. We’ve already ceased to exist.
“Imogen,” I whisper. “Imogen.”
Her eyes flick towards me, defiant, admitting no guilt.
“How’d you get in?”
“There are other airlocks, dummy. This dome is hundreds of kilometers in circumference. All the trucks go out at different times.”
Oh.
She goes back to ignoring me, standing straight and respectful, waiting for the VP to need her. How could she do this to us? I remember our conversation beside the lake. She said that she felt relaxed here. That it was different and good. I’m sure she was speaking from the heart.
“They’re going to kill us, Imogen.”
“Don’t be stupid,” she hisses.
“As soon as your man’s out of the way, it’ll be curtains for us. You have to say something.”
Nothing.
“It was them behind us on the Railroad, wasn’t it? That ship blocking the Burren junction? That was a Samsung ship.”
“TchVK Arcadia Security,” she corrects me.
“How did they find us? I suppose they just followed Sam’s lot?”
Imogen smiles faintly, and holds up a necklace she is wearing outside her spacesuit. It’s one of those chunky ugly pendants she was selling on Arcadia. “Behold the Tangle.”
“The what?”
“They come in pairs.” She nods at the TchVK Arcadia Outsourcing boss’s wristwatch.
“What are they?”
“Quantum-based FTL comms. A-tech, of course.”
Jesus Christ, that’s been on the top ten wish list forever. “Why haven’t I heard about this?”
“No one else has, either,” sh
e whispers. “It’s totally hush-hush. They haven’t been reverse-engineered yet. There are only about twenty pairs in the universe.”
And now we know about them, too, which gives TchVK Arcadia Security another reason to bump us off, if they needed one.
The VP is saying to the Bratva: “ … they’d be pretty cute if you cleaned them up. They look like Ewoks! Or is that just me? Anyway, I can totally see them as high-end pets.”
Immersed in our own plight, I did not notice that the Bratva have caught some Care Bears of the Lost Planet. They now drag them closer for the VP’s inspection. The poor things have leashes around their neck. They cringe, snivelling.
“Awww,” says the VP, patting one on the head. Isn’t it queer how he’s warmed to them, whereas we, members of his own species, might as well not be here at all? He tells the Bratva, “Yeah, top priority is finding out where the force fields are manufactured. We might have to take the whole dome apart. But we’ll definitely take some of these little guys home with us. Nice job, Sergei.”
And it dawns on me.
They don’t know where the force fields come from.
At the moment, myself, Donal, Gordon, and Finian are the only ones in the universe with that knowledge.
And very soon, Finian will be on his way back to Arcadia, possessing a secret worth billions—while our bones moulder on the Lost Planet …
No!
Sheer rage jolts me to my feet. I’m talking loudly, before the Bratva can knock me down. “Sir! I know you’ve not had much time to observe them yet, but these little guys are actually intelligent.”
The VP sees me for the first time. He raises his eyebrows.
“We’ve been here for weeks, living with them and communicating with them. They’re talking to you right now! They’re begging you to save them! They’ve been imprisoned here forever! It was the Denebites who victimized them and set up this horrible jail.”
Kenneth figures out what I’m up to, and jumps in. “I’m a trained xenobiologist, and my observations support the conclusion that they are sophonts,” he lies, desperately.
Gordon—who has been in the ‘they’re intelligent!’ camp all along—concurs, in his educated stacker’s tones. Finian scowls.
But the Samsung VP is not looking at either of them. He’s looking from me to the Care Bears. The wheels of that well-polished mind are turning.
“They were trapped here, so they survived the fall of the Denebite Empire,” I lay it out for him. “And here they are, and here you are, sir! In your position you can save them from further victimization!”
I stop there, wary of laying it on too thick.
But he’s going for it. He is going for it! He’s crouching, looking into the nearest Care Bear’s eyes, and the little creature chooses this moment to growl in a way that sounds very much like talking. It stretches out its paw to touch the VP’s face.
Maybe they are intelligent, at that.
Maybe they can tell that if there’s one thing that gets a stacker even more excited than new A-tech, it is the prospect of being the first person to discover living, sapient aliens.
The VP stands up, trembling. “It’s a distinct possibility,” he says in a voice choked with emotion.
Finian blurts in rage, “They’re never intelligent! They’re just teddy bears that shit force fields!”
“They what?” shouts everyone who did not know this before.
“They produce force fields via their digestive processes,” I say. I was going to play this card soon, anyway. “That is why the Denebites imprisoned them! Sir, it’s as if aliens locked us up to harvest our skins or something! We must rescue them from their cruel captivity.”
The VP nods decisively. “Regarding, um, shitting force fields, I’d have to see that to believe it. But are they intelligent? I’m gonna stick my neck out here and say … Jesus, they obviously are!”
And with this I am content. He’s heard what I have to say, and agreed with me. I exist for him now. Our lives are safe.
“What do you say, little guys?” the VP croons to the Care Bears. “We’ll fix you up with a nice new planet, your sapient rights guaranteed, and in return you can, um—” he’s giggling helplessly— “shit for us?”
He throws his head back, laughing, and I laugh with him, we all do (except Finian), chortling along as sycophantically as any Bratva.
We may not get any of the credit, and we won’t get any of the money, but what does that matter? We’ll get a lift back to Arcadia.
Which shows how little I understand the minds of Big Tech executives.
CHAPTER 17
“This,” says Imogen, “fucking sucks.” She flops down beside me. “I can’t believe they left us here!”
We are sitting on the ground in the refugee camp the maintenance robots set up for the surviving Care Bears of the Lost Planet. Silver shacks, provided by the robots, gleam against the bleak burned forest. Baby Care Bears frolic around. Nearly all the forest is burned, and we’re not allowed into the un-burned part. The robots are busy, taking cuttings and whatever else they’re programmed to do, rejuvenating the forest. In the meantime we’re living on tubers that taste like mashed potatoes without salt. We dig them up in the burned areas. They give everyone tummy-aches.
I continue flaking the charred shells off another basket of the horrible things, while Imogen vents her feelings.
“Three ships, three, and there wasn’t room for us on any of them?”
The Samsung security contractors bumped us to make room for more Care Bears.
And adding insult to injury, Finian abandoned us, too. The minute the glow of TchVK Arcadia Outsourcing’s thrusters faded in the sky, he took all three DC-100s and buggered off. Gordon went with him. They took the Old Elephants who’d been imprisoned on the Bagged & Tagged, our own South Africans, and a few of Sam Junior’s surviving lads who were up for it. They’ve gone to bash Special Delivery Sam. That’s why Finian came out this way in the first place, after all.
“You could have gone with them,” I say to Imogen. “Nothing was stopping you. Finian said anyone could come if they were up for it.”
“Ucccch. I am not the thrills and spills type.” She gives me a wry glance. “I may have mentioned that before?”
I can see she’s trying to coax a smile out of me, but she’ll have to do more than be charming before I can forgive her. If not for her treachery, we’d be on our way back to Arcadia right now with a cargo hold full of Care Bears, and an obscenely huge payday awaiting.
Well, at least Finian didn’t get the A-tech, either. So that’s him paid back for cheating me out of my $280 million. It’s cold comfort.
“There’ll be no thrills where they were going,” I say.
“Right? I am so not up for a buccaneering raid on Omega Centauri 49.”
“He’ll probably lose.” I slide the basket of tubers towards Imogen. “Do you want to do some of these?”
As I suspected, she does not. She wanders off to seek sympathy elsewhere. I continue to clean the tubers. My hands are chapped, my nails torn, soot ingrained into the skin. My ancestors in the nineteenth century cleaned tatties with their hands, just like this, and they also suffered hunger pangs night and day.
But they did not have Hollywood deals, and video game development deals, and their own line of perfumes.
What’s that? you say. Ah, yes. Before the Samsung VP left, he got around to asking our names. When he heard Donal’s name, he said that reminded him, the Goldman Sachs people on Arcadia had given him a letter for Donal if he should happen to meet us out this way.
The letter went: “Dear Mr. O’Leary, per section 144.6(b) of your contract, in lieu of your debt we have seized all rights to your poem Feck Off With You: Butterfly-Zilla, An Epic Poem. Your account is now closed. You should, however, expect no revenues relating to Feck Off With You or its related properties, including Feck Off With You (film), Feck Off With You (video game), the upcoming Feck Off With You clothing and fragrance line, or the Fec
k Off With You cooking school franchise and reality television show.”
We were blindsided, as you would be. But the Samsung VP swore the letter was genuine, and then we remembered that before we left Arcadia, Donal put my poem on the internet. I’d said he could, not expecting anything to come of it. Now it turns out the bloody thing went viral. People want to hear about the trials we face in the exploration industry. So my poem’s going to make millions … for Goldman Sachs.
Congratulations, said the Samsung VP, and then he buggered off and left us.
We were quite elated, for about five minutes. Goldman Sachs won’t be slapping liens on the houses of our families on Earth. That’s something. It is not a small thing.
But we’re still stuck on the Lost Planet, digging tatties up with sticks, and we’re still broke.
The blasted tubers are not going to get any cleaner than this, given the state of my hands. I carry them over to the cookfire and dump them into the pot.
Now it’s time to go out and relieve Donal.
We’re mending the Intergalactic Bogtrotter.
All the other players dismissed it as a wreck, and it is, it is. But you can do a lot with force fields.
We’ve got experience and motivation, and we’ve got a stacker: Ruby, who declined to go on the Special Delivery Sam-bashing expedition. He feels very betrayed by Finian. He wants to get back to Arcadia and start taking his meds again.
He will be disappointed, but he won’t be the only one.
Shouldering my spacesuit, I set out on the long tramp to the airlock. I’ve got an hour before the truck, so I take my time. New green shoots haze the burnt forest floor. There’s a tangy smell of fresh growth.
I’m surprised you didn’t go with Finian, Donal said to me after my uncle left.
Why? I said.
Well, you nutted those two kids like it was nothing. I couldn’t have done that. I never knew you had it in you.
I didn’t know I had it in me either, I said with a laugh, and Donal looked at me as if I was a stranger.
I wanted to tell him then that I regret it every day. I slid one toe over the edge of the precipice, and I didn’t like what I saw, so I pulled back. But I can’t add to his trauma. He already feels guilty that I killed poor Annika and Jesse because he wouldn’t or couldn’t.
The COMPLETE Reluctant Adventures of Fletcher Connolly on the Interstellar Railroad: A Comedic Sci-Fi Adventure Page 18