Void All The Way Down: The Sliding Void Omnibus

by Stephen Hunt

  The owner’s eyes narrowed greedily, weighing up the dollars on offer against the risk of Sophia’s once sentient status getting out. Samuel Happy Samuel made his decision, just as Zeno had known he would. ‘It’s your money, friend. But unless that money’s to suppress my curiosity too, what the hell is she to you?’

  ‘We used to be married,’ said Zeno. ‘Back in the day.’

  ‘No shizzle,’ whistled the owner. ‘I’ll give you some advice, friend, and this is on the house, even if it costs me everything that you’re offering to pay. She isn’t inside there now. What you cared for, whatever you knew, it’s long gone. You can’t expect any more out of that oiler than you’d expect from your shuttle’s autopilot system. You need to move on, brother.’

  ‘I’m moving.’ Zeno started to walk away from the counter. Don’t think I’ve ever stopped. Over on the music deck, the musician finished the song and swivelled around on his stool, a face identical to the bartender’s, identical to the cleaner pushing the mop too, the only ones inside the club clapping the musician. Clapping himself. Clones. Well, at least the joint’s new owners had also once known what it had been like to work as slaves for humanity. This place was as good a mausoleum as Zeno had for Sophia’s remains.

  ‘Old Blue Eyes gets me every time too,’ said the musician, mistaking the red outline around Zeno’s eyes for the android being moved by his song. The cleaner clone nodded in sympathy.

  ‘You played it for her, now play it for me. Play it, Samuels,’ said Zeno, leaning on the piano. ‘Just play it again.’

  ***

  If you needed to go to a bar on Transference Station, then as far as Lana was concerned, the Fantasma Blanco was the place to go to. Its transparent ceiling gave onto the void, a panoramic view of shuttles, hull maintenance drones and incoming cargo capsules to gaze out onto. Here, nobody cared what planet you had come from or what planet you were going to. Genetic enhancements, cybernetic implants and alien bodies didn’t draw a second glance; because no matter how many arms, legs or eyes you had, everyone inside the establishment was wearing a ship-suit, olive green with the uniforms only able to be told apart from the vessels’ emblems sown into the fabric. And if the conformity of the clothes didn’t give you a clue as to what sort of bar this was, then the large square panels that lined the walls, rotating blueprints of starship designs from the last twenty thousand years, would be enough to penetrate the consciousness of the densest civilian accidentally wandering inside by mistake. Not that many locals did enter the Fantasma Blanco by mistake. Theirs was an idiosyncratic, lonely profession. Fleet bars might see a little groupie action, want-to-be toughs and flighty fighter jock fannage, but anyone who really wanted to live as a gypsy travelling between the stars was probably already in here wearing flight greens. Lana, Skrat and Calder had taken one of the corner booths, a round table covered with plates of cheese-covered tortilla chips and refried beans. There was a rumour that the bar’s owner, Lola Chacon, came from one of the world below’s Bolivian founding families; that she’d been disinherited after she’d run away to sign up as crew. Lana wasn’t sure if the story was true; the tale sounded a little too romantic – the kind of scuttlebutt that always circulated the melancholy sight of a grounded spacer. Just the thought of retiring to a place like this is enough of a spur to keep me flying.

  When Polter and Zeno turned up, her navigator and android entered together. Lana briefly wondered if Zeno had been convinced by the navigator to attend a church service, but she quickly dismissed that idea. Zeno had lived so long that hearing the android’s confession would take any priest into the new decade. The two crewmen ordered at the round counter in the centre of the bar and then walked over, Polter waiting for the smart chair to reform to his alien shape before settling down.

  ‘So what’s bubbling with Dollar-sign Dillard?’ asked Zeno. ‘We shipping a hold full of Class-A drugs to some mud-pit with the death penalty for importing anything stronger than tobacco and root beer?’

  Lana glanced over at Skrat’s phone left on the table’s surface. Its privacy field indicator was blinking green, protecting their conversation from eavesdropping. In a bar full of potential competitors, you could never be too careful. ‘The job’s a deep space exploration run, supposedly. Running cargo, cover and resources into an unclaimed, uninhabited world.’

  Zeno frowned. ‘Deep space? That means we can measure the law by the wattage of our laser cannons.’

  ‘Edge space isn’t exactly pirate-free,’ said Lana. ‘And at least we know the pirates aren’t going to be wearing local police uniforms and trying to shake us down for a percentage of our cargo.’

  ‘Does the story check out?’

  ‘DSD won’t give us the nav coordinates until we’re ready to jump, but the head of mission checks out. She’s called Professor Alison Sebba. Mars-born, a graduate from Elysium Mons University. Old world money and an alliance citizen. She’s got enough pedigree on missions like this for DSD’s story to be plausible.’

  ‘And you don’t find that suspicious, how?’

  ‘Don’t worry, we’ve investigated the professor’s history,’ said Calder. ‘She’s the least suspicious thing about this voyage.’

  Lana would have found Calder’s vote of confidence a little more reassuring if she didn’t know that his experience of online research was as pristine to the world as a freshly minted battle-axe, and about as useful as a blade in the data sphere, too.

  ‘I meant old world money slumming with Dollar-sign,’ said Zeno. ‘That I find suspect. If this professor is full-on patrician, how come she’s not working as an over-paid survey consultant for some alliance blue chip?’

  ‘Shizzle,’ said Lana, ‘we’re slumming with DSD, aren’t we? Besides, deep space is where the action is when you’re working in the exploration field. The alliance is still too cautious. They want a century’s worth of environmental impact studies and biohazard data before they even consider opening up a world.’ There wasn’t anything the android was saying that Lana hadn’t already considered, but the way he was putting it together gave her pause to think. Am I letting desperation overrule my common sense? Sure deep space is dangerous, but then any void is dangerous. No, she had made her mind up. They needed to do this. ‘Every time we slip dock we’re putting our necks on the line. And the money’s better than good. The up-front payment alone is enough to overhaul half the Gravity Rose’s systems.’

  ‘We’re slumming with that mope because we don’t have a whole heap of alternative options on the table,’ sighed Zeno. The golden skin around his eyes crinkled as his brain practically whirred in front of them, weighing up the options. She knew how the android felt. Risk versus reward, an equation that was even older than Zeno. There weren’t definite answers to be found in DSD’s tale, though, only subtle shades of getting fleeced. ‘Yeah, okay,’ Zeno finally relented, his voice heavy with remorse. ‘But if we do this, I’m going to go over every molecule of every crate of supplies we lift out of station. A fleet interceptor with a boarding capsule full of marines couldn’t run a more thorough search and interdiction than my metal ass.’

  ‘On that point, old chap, I believe we are agreed,’ said Skrat. ‘I don’t wish to be the idiot trying to flush a company of irritable war bots out of our air recycling vents again.’

  ‘Perhaps the Holy of Holies has blessed us with this contract,’ said Polter, tapping his carapace thoughtfully. ‘Yes, it must be so.’

  Lana grimaced. As she recalled, their navigator believed that every cargo they took on was a sign from God, including the ones that had nearly seen them all killed. If there really was a message from the deity hidden inside DSD’s schemes, Lana didn’t think she wanted to read the memo, because the Lord Almighty was surely telling her to get out of the game.

  ‘How about the chief?’ asked Calder, showing admirable loyalty towards the maniac teaching him the ropes on board the Rose.

  ‘Hell, boy, he’s sealed up tight in the engine room,’ said Zeno. ‘A little t
oo tight. I don’t think he’s ever coming out.’

  ‘You know what I mean,’ said Calder.

  Lana pulled out her phone, patched it through to the ship’s messaging system via a line that was so secure it was probably technically illegal on the station, sending details of the proposed job through to the ship’s engine room. A minute later she had the reply and angled her screen towards Calder. ‘There we are. “Light cargo means light load on engines.” I could have told the chief we were shipping a company of mercenaries into a war zone and he probably would have e-mailed back the same thing.’ Lana looked at Calder and asked the question, trying not to reveal how much the answer might mean to her. Not even to herself. ‘How about you, your noble highness? I’ve done what I agreed with Rex Matobo. You’re offworld, safe and officially in exile. You can stay here on Transference Station, maybe travel down dirt side – grab yourself some of that normal living – or sign on with us as crew and help make DSD even richer than the little egomaniac already is.’

  ‘Normal living for me would be sitting on a throne and making more truly bad decisions about the future of my nation. But that’s not an option anymore, is it?’

  ‘No, I suppose it isn’t.’ Maybe this is my bad decision, taking you along. Don’t know which of us is going to end up worse for it at the end of the day. You or me, Calder Durk.

  ‘There’s a big wide universe out there,’ said Calder. ‘I might as well see as much of it as I can before I die.’

  ‘Well done there, sir,’ said Skrat, clapping him on the back. ‘Answered like one whose manifest destiny is to slide void with the rest of the chaps.’

  Lana nodded, trying not to smile. It was the right answer. But her happiness instantly evaporated as she caught sight of the immaculately pressed uniform approaching out of the corner of her eye. She groaned. Lana had forgotten that this wasn’t just her venue of choice when she came visiting Transference Station, it was his too.

  ‘Captain Fiveworlds,’ said Pitor Skeeg, his green eyes twinkling mischievously. He appeared far too fit for his age. Trim and presidential, every bit of what a human starship captain should look like – although closer to a fleet stereotype rather than the run-of-the-mill slobs that Lana usually ran into commanding free traders. Zeno had told her once that Pitor had got his face genetically reset to resemble an actor called George Clooney. People like Pitor always went for remodels based on celebrities from way back when that nobody but entertainment historians remembered. It being considered bad taste to base your looks on current VIPs and all. Might be true. Pitor was far too vain to want anyone to believe his features were anything but natural luck in nature’s genetic lottery. Like all the bets Pitor took, he only put down on a sure thing. And don’t all the girls love it.

  ‘Captain Skeeg,’ said Lana. ‘I’m surprised you’re still working the Edge with the rest of the lowlife. I thought you’d be flying alliance-side, these days.’

  He shrugged nonchalantly. ‘That’s not why the Hyperfast Group bought me out. They might be expanding into the Edge, but the Edge is still the Edge, right? It takes a specialist to prosper in the border systems. So I’m their man. Not much point buying a dog and wagging your own tail.’

  Lana’s eye’s narrowed. But you buy a snake, and it’s tail all the way from tip to top. And you don’t wag a snake; you pick it up and slap it against the wall a few times.

  ‘Shizzle,’ said Zeno. ‘You take the man’s money, then you fly where the man sends you.’

  Pitor shrugged nonchalantly. ‘Same void, wherever we jump, android. Black and largely empty.’

  ‘We talking about the depths of the void, here, or just your soul?’ said Lana.

  ‘That’s impolite,’ said Pitor. ‘And here I was coming to tell you that I’m in charge of seven ships, now.’

  Lana angrily clinked the cocktail she had been sipping down onto the table. ‘You’ve got the empire you always wanted, then.’

  ‘There’s room for eight vessels, Captain Fiveworlds,’ said Pitor. ‘That’s an offer you should give serious consideration to. Because pretty soon, there’s not going to be room for independents in the Edge. Nobody wants to chance a cargo worth more than two t-dollars to a tramp freighter anymore. Clients want insurance, they want back-up transports, they want reliability and security.’

  ‘Write your offer up in triplicate and send me the green copy,’ sneered Lana.

  ‘Think what your ship is worth. You would be rich.’

  ‘No, I think I’d be real poor. As in a poor-ass excuse for a real skipper.’

  ‘Right now your expertise and local knowledge is worth something. As is your starship, even one as creaking and antiquated as the Gravity Rose. Give it a few more years and the cadet officers training with us will have command of their own vessels. New, efficient craft supplied by Hyperfast, direct from alliance shipyards. What then for your beloved Rose? Well, maybe you’ll get lucky. Perhaps there’ll be some proto-industrial backwater where the local savages need their first supply ship for an in-system run. Or maybe the market for spare parts will improve.’

  ‘Eat vacuum, Skeeg! The only spare part in orbit around here is you. Now, off you hop.’

  ‘Don’t be like that, captain,’ said the other skipper, leaning in to run a finger briefly through her hair.

  Calder shot out of his seat. ‘Remove your hands from her!’

  ‘Who is this dolbo yeb, captain?’ laughed Pitor. ‘The ship suit is worn, but the man inside, I think, is as green as your first mate’s scales.’

  Calder bristled, ready for battle, but Zeno held him back. ‘On my world, the cure for you would be a length of steel in the guts.’

  ‘Then you should try inventing gunpowder, comrade, rather than bothering yourself in affairs that are above your pay grade. Captain Fiveworlds and myself were due to be married. And I still hold more than a little fondness in my heart for Lana, despite the callous injudiciousness she’s displayed towards me.’

  ‘Married?’ That took the wind of out of Calder’s sails far faster than the android’s restraining grasp.

  ‘Now you’re just getting dirty,’ glared Lana, ‘reminding me of that error.’

  ‘The error was in not tying our fortunes together.’

  ‘No,’ said Lana, the blood boiling in her veins. ‘The error was in you trying to sell my ship to Hyperfast without telling me.’

  ‘Merely an opening negotiating position,’ said Pitor, ‘a misunderstanding.’

  Lana gave him the finger. ‘How about this? There any wriggle room on interpreting this, on my side of the debate?’

  ‘You are not proper ship family, or you would behave with more decorum, captain. But I do not blame you. When a woman crews with such write-offs and reprobates as your gang of misfits, a little of the scum must rub off eventually.’

  Zeno grabbed Lana too as she tried to rise up and swing for the rival skipper, reminding her that his android strength went far beyond human. On the other side of the bar, Pitor’s crew had jumped out of their chairs, ready to wade in and make this a proper barroom brawl. ‘Don’t do it, girl,’ whispered Zeno. ‘Of all the jams we’ve escaped together, dumping chuckles here was by far the closest scrape.’

  ‘You think that blue chip alliance money is enough to buy me?’ said Lana, raising her voice loud enough for every spacer in the bar to hear. ‘You and Hyperfast can jump to hell together. There’s not enough credit in Mitsubishi Bank to buy what you and your friends want.’

  ‘Never make a good decision when you can make a bad one,’ sighed Pitor. He bowed slightly towards her. ‘Some things never change. Well then, we shall see what the passage of time brings. Nothing good, I fear.’

  ‘Every bit the cad,’ said Skrat, watching the rival skipper cross back to a table on the opposite side of the bar.

  ‘You nearly married him?’ said Calder, disbelievingly.

  ‘Stow that attitude, Mister Calder,’ snarled Lana. ‘I seem to recall you were engaged to a noblewoman who ended up deposi
ng you, annexing your country and trying to have you boiled alive in a tar bath. Compared to that bitch, Pitor Skeeg could nearly be mistaken for stand-up crew.’

  ‘Only in a bad light,’ said Zeno. ‘I did warn you . . .’

  Lana slumped back into her seat. ‘I ever get to be as old as you, maybe I’ll be so wise after the event.’

  ‘I’m still making mistakes,’ said Zeno, ‘just new ones, is all.’

  Lana gazed morosely at her empty drink. Seven ships, now? She’d do a deal with the devil if it meant showing Hyperfast that she still had what it takes. Lana wouldn’t let the Gravity Rose go down, not with that little twister waiting on the sidelines to pick up her keys. Nobody can spoil the taste of a Rum Swizzle like Pitor Skeeg. ‘Let’s get the heck out of here, load up those supplies and roll out the red carpet for DSD’s tame academic.’

  The void wouldn’t be half as cold as the atmosphere in this place.

  ***

  Pitor Skeeg waited until the crew of the Gravity Rose had left the bar, then he walked up to the counter in the centre and nodded towards the owner, Chacon. She frowned at him, but came over, all the same, checking no staff or other customers were in earshot.

  ‘Give it up,’ he ordered.

  ‘I don’t like this,’ she complained.

  ‘Then you shouldn’t have sold your bar to Hyperfast,’ said Pitor. ‘But don’t worry, if you possess a few residual scruples, just tell yourself it’s an investment in your future. With the life extension treatments you’re accepting from the company, it could prove a very long life. Providing for yourself should be considered a necessity, not a luxury.’

  She grimaced, but slipped her hand under the counter, activating the data transfer to his phone all the same. He lifted his device up as it confirmed successful receipt of her download.