"Why should we pay?" Marla said. "Let's just put this guy down for good and get on with our business. I'm tired of putting up with his crap."
"That's who we are now?" Duncan said. "We kill people?"
"You'd probably feel differently, hon, if that was me sitting there covered in burns."
"Probably," Duncan allowed, "but it isn't. The guy covered in burns is the guy who bet the dogs and lost." He turned to Richie. "I'm sympathetic, bro, but you brought this down on us. Now we're talking about killing someone. Is that who we are?" He looked at Nathan when he asked.
Nathan shifted around and straightened up. "He was in our home, Duncan. We had a deal with him to get Richie square and he walked into our home and crapped all over us. What was his rule? 'You owe, you pay', right? Well I have rules too. No one comes on my boat and messes with my crew."
Cole and Kimiyo came laughing up the corridor just then. When they saw everyone in the galley Cole raised an eyebrow. "What's all this?"
They filled him in, Nathan showed him the note and the discussion picked up where it had left off.
"I'm going to have to report this to Saji Vy," Kimiyo said. "Arulio is a very expensive resource. The fact that he is in criminal hands is unacceptable."
"Does he know things he could reveal about Saji Vy?" Nathan said.
"He does but Arulio's mindware is encrypted. Even he doesn't know the access codes. He can't access anything proprietary but that won't stop them from trying to get information out of him."
"You can't tell Saji," Cole said. "You'll lose your job."
"That's true. He was my responsibility."
"Can you get the money?" Nathan said.
She nodded affirmatively. "But there's no way to gloss over that as an incidental expense. We would have to explain. Do you have it?"
"I can draw a loan from Lucy but not fast enough to get this done."
"Time's the issue, isn't it?" Cole said, sitting down wearily. "We have a hostage to pay ransom for in the morning so we can use him as ransom when we meet other kidnappers in the afternoon."
"Remember when we used to just repo starships?" Duncan said. "Those were good days. People would fall behind on their bills and we would go collect their yacht or freighter or whatever. Now we have strategy sessions for ransom drops and debate what we should do with loan sharks who can self-immolate."
"Let's just go to the meet and explain that kidnapping Arulio is not a good idea," Kimiyo said. "Stealing from Saji Vy is a terrible mistake. He holds a grudge and he can be ruthless."
"He won't listen," Cole said. "Atomic Jack thinks he's holding all the cards but his greed is blinding him to the fact that we may not have the money he wants."
"Criminals aren't known for their brains," Nathan said. "Isn't that what you always tell me?"
"Yeah. Penal rehab facilities are full of guys who think they're smarter than everyone else."
"So why don't we just call protective services?" Marla said. "Have them go to the meet and get Arulio back."
Nathan shook his head. "We could but that blows the deal for the Charon. Saji was very clear that he didn't want any negative publicity concerning the body barge. That point was made explicitly."
"He's like that," Kimiyo said. "You would be surprised at some of the things he has covered up. You could write a hell of a book." She stood up pulled a can of tea from the fridge and took a sip. “Look, Nathan, I know you’re the captain here and you want to handle this your own way, but Arulio is my responsibility and I’m Saji’s representative. We’re going to play it my way.”
“I appreciate what you’re saying Kimiyo but Atomic Jack is our problem,” he said.
“And I appreciate that,” she said curling into a chair. “But now he’s become my problem. It’s under control.”
“I really don’t see how.”
“Nathan, I have a couple hours work ahead of me. Why don’t you all get some sleep and I’ll fill you in before we leave.”
Cole sat beside her. “Do you need some help? This isn’t the first kidnapping I’ve been involved with.”
“I think that’s a good idea,” she said. “A little marshal’s knowledge could come in handy.”
“Ex-marshal.”
“But still.”
“We should probably work in my quarters,” he said. “It will be quieter there.”
Silence fell in the compartment as everyone looked at Cole. Marla shook her head.
“Or we could work here,” he said.
The galley cleared out. Duncan looked at Nathan. “That’s it?”
“Apparently.”
“Okay, let’s get Richie down to the medical bay.”
“We’re still going to come up with something though, right?” Marla said.
Nathan nodded. “What do you think?”
Celeste lay back in cool sheets, her heart racing as Montario moved in the bathroom. Scoundrel he may be but Celeste thoroughly enjoyed her time with him out of her “cell”. She stared at the brilliant red silk canopy above his bed. Being the head clown of this circus had its perks. Her room had a metal ceiling painted a dull off-white color. Those were the kinds of things you noticed when you spent days on end locked up. She sat up and sipped cool water from a glass on the stand beside the bed.
The plan was behind schedule by a couple of days already. Saji had taken longer than expected to get their ransom together. The initial meeting was later today, their time. As Montario exited the bathroom, doubt crept into her thoughts again.
He walked out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his waist. Celeste looked him over, admiring his strong shoulders. She considered that her current predicament could have been brought about because her judgment was clouded. He turned and must have seen the dour look on her face.
“Something wrong, babe? You don’t look happy.”
“Do you worry that we’ve made this overly complicated?”
“How do you mean?”
She sighed. “Couldn’t we have been happy with just ransoming the body barge? Saji Vy would have paid a small fortune to get it returned.”
He smiled and sat down on the edge of the bed. “Babe, I don’t want a small fortune. I want a large fortune.” He gestured, holding his hands apart. “A big one. Stacks of coin piled up as high as I can see.”
“But this could have been a good, quick score,” she said. “We grab the ship with me working inside and then walk with the money. No one would think twice if I quit after a hijacking.”
He sat down and took her hand. He gave her that smile that she knew got him into more than a few beds. “Celeste, you have to trust the plan. Saji would have paid a hundred grand at most to get the body barge back. Anything more than that and I think he would have just accepted the bad press and sent in the marines. After that we would have had to look over our shoulders forever because he is not a man who forgets or forgives. I told you, crossing him is an extremely dangerous proposition.”
“And yet that’s exactly what we’re doing,” she said.
“This isn’t crossing him, exactly.”
Celeste looked at him with a raised eyebrow.
He held up his hands defensively. “At most this is an inconvenience to him. He’ll get his ship and cargo back unharmed and it won’t cost him a dime. Remember, inconveniencing Saji is one thing. Taking money out of his pocket is quite another. I don’t think anyone has ever been hurt because they inconvenienced him.”
“You don’t think?” She said.
“Yeah I do,” he said with a smile. “I knew a guy once, grabbed some freight off a receiving dock in the warehouse where he worked, right? This was back in Go City at a warehouse Saji owned. Anyway, it was part of a shipment of starship waste recyclers. Not a sexy score by any measure but the kind that will make paying the bills easier, you follow?”
She nodded.
“Well , Saji has quite an organization. Eyes and ears everywhere, keeping a look out. This friend of mine got as far as home with his ta
ke and there was a knock at the door.”
“Saji?”
He shook his head. “In person? No, not for a couple pallets of waste recyclers. It was just a couple of guys from the warehouse. They sat my guy down and explained the facts of life to him. Give back the recyclers and nothing worse than losing his job would happen. If he didn’t or couldn’t, like if he’d sold them? They explained he was just going to disappear.”
“Had he sold them?”
“Not yet, so he did the wise thing and showed them to a storage unit where he’d stashed them. He offered to cut them in on the sale but all that got him was a broken nose.”
Celeste sat up straight in the bed. “That’s what you’ve based this plan on?” Her eyes flashed with anger. “I thought you had better intelligence. This is all based on some story from one of your old hoodlum friends?”
She jumped out of bed and started pulling on her clothes. “You’re going to get us killed.”
He sighed and stood up. “You’re over reacting.”
She turned and advanced on him, her green eyes narrowed. “I’m not.”
He took her arm. “Come back to bed and let me explain. I promise you’ll calm down once I explain further.”
She shook his arm off. “You’ve seen the last of me in bed for a long time. I shouldn’t have agreed to this. We’re going to be killed.”
“Celeste, cut the act,” he said. “You wanted revenge on Saji. That’s why you came in on this with me.”
“But…”
“They used you! You were good at your job! You are a great pilot and they threw you away because some old bastard couldn’t keep his hands off you. Driving a bus full of dead people is a ridiculous waste of your talent. Some seventy year old retiree should have that job but you got screwed because you wouldn’t lay down for them.”
She stared at the wall, seething.
“Well, this time it’s you using him and his company to get what you deserve. It’s just a scam. No one is getting hurt here. We’re just taking money and we aren’t even taking his. We’re borrowing the services of his wetjack.”
She looked up at him. “That’s true.”
“And the money? These kid’s money? We’re doing them a favor. I’ve never seen a bigger group of naïve people. They deserve to have their pockets picked just so they’ll grow up a little. And let me tell you, every one of these kids has deep pockets. There’s not one of them that doesn’t have a trust fund feeding their “religion”. You think I’m the first con man to take the reigns? It’s a revolving door of grifters who get in, scam them for what they can grab before they get caught and then bolt. These kids will follow anyone who has ideas and confidence and I have both.”
“You’re not here for the quick scam, though.”
“Oh no,” he said. “I did my homework. I know how what’s here. There are fat stacks of cash just waiting to be picked up. I never want to work again.”
She buttoned her top and backed away. “You told me you bought this scam from the previous guy, the other guy who pretended to be their leader.”
“Right, my buddy Bobby. Getting in here cost me a lot of money but it looks like it’s worth it. Hell, I don’t even really understand why they call themselves the Children of the Apocalyptic Rainbow.”
“Why didn’t Bobby grab the cash? Surely there’s some other way than what we’re doing.”
“It’s in accounts at major banks. I told you, cracking that security encryption requires a wetjack.”
“We could bribe someone.”
He took her hands in his. “Celeste, you know as well as I do that bank employees are rewarded, handsomely, for turning in people who try to bribe them. They live for those bonuses. I have friends in prison because they tried scamming banks using inside people. It can’t be done.”
"What about anyone inside the religion?" She said.
He started to answer and hesitated.
"What is it?" She said.
He got off the bed. "Most of these kids are here because they're lost, right? They need a little direction. Be the best whatever they want to be, right? Well, there's this one guy who really wants to be all he can be. He buys into all of this hook, line and sinker."
She tied her boots. "What's this joker's name?"
"Caleb. Caleb Wooburn."
"He's hardcore, huh?"
"Oh yeah," he said. "Caleb's a little older than the kids you've seen. Most of them find their way into the group in their late teens or early twenties and get what they need after a few years."
"Like a sense of purpose or direction?"
"Exactly," he said. "Now, some folks come later in life but they have different problems, you know? Bad marriages, issues with their kids or even job loss."
"A cure for the mid-life crisis?"
"Exactly."
She thought for a moment. "Does that last bit have anything to do with all the older people working these side businesses the cult runs? I've noticed that all the janitors, chamber maids and food service workers wearing rainbow uniforms are older."
He seemed embarrassed. "Yeah, that's what we call our work therapy program."
"Work therapy?"
"We give the older folks jobs and tell them to focus their energies on the work."
"That's despicable," she said but laughed a little.
"They are great at what they do. We've got more requests for work than we can handle."
"That's not therapy. That's a revenue stream."
"The point is," he said, "people come into the group, get themselves straightened out and then leave. At some point the young people realize they've given away quite a bit of their trust fund and wasted some good years taking drugs and having sex with strange people. They fade off and get on with their lives. The older people learn that they're capable of achieving whatever it is they want and get tired of tithing most of their paycheck to the group. They take off too but usually they're polite enough to give two weeks notice."
"But this guy Caleb..."
"Yeah, Caleb is a special case. The guy I got this gig from? Bobby? He said Caleb's kind of a problem. Caleb is in his early forties and he's been here since he was in his early twenties. Two decades of following the seven paths to enlightenment have scrambled his skull."
"He's like those guys that never graduate from college," Celeste said. "They just keep earning one degree after another."
"I'll take your word for it," Montario said. "I never made it to college. Anyway, Caleb can be kind of a problem. He considers himself to be the 'old man' around here.
He hits on all the new girls and bosses the older folks around. I try to keep him away from here on different assignments but it never seems to last."
"He's here now?"
"No, but he'll be back any time. I didn't want him around while we pulled this caper. He's so damn nosy he would never stop asking questions about why you guys are here."
"What did you do with him?"
"I sent him to Olympia to help set up a new cleaning office at one of the spaceports. The trouble is, he's done this so many times it won't take him very long."
"Will the cover story fool him? That we're here because we had engine problems and you’re helping to repair our ship?"
"Maybe. He's suspicious of me as all hell. You have to remember, he's seen a string of leaders come through here. Seen them come and seen them go. He's been bugging me to allow him to take on more of a leadership role in the group."
"So he does have ambition?"
"Somewhat," Monatrio said. "I think he's finally figured out that the higher up you go in the food chain here the easier the ride. That's why he's been busting his hump setting up offices and managing things. It's been tricky because that's all stuff that needs done and I don't want to do it and neither does anyone else around here."
"Your laziness is going to bring this crashing down around us."
"I'm not that worried about him. I'll just find something else for him to do. You know, in a funny
way, our little con will benefit Caleb."
"How's that?"
"When we leave? The last thing I plan on doing is leaving him in charge."
She smiled and said, "You're terrible." Then she got a little more serious. “So this is it?”
“This is it,” he said. “We get our wetjack, bust into the accounts and run for the hills. You’ll never have to do anything you don’t want to do again. We could fly off and explore to your heart’s content or live in the lap of luxury in the resorts of Mare Vegas on Earth’s moon. All you have to do is hold it together for a few more days.”
“Just sit tight in my cell?”
“That’s it, honey. I’ll take care of everything.”
She pulled on her boots and stepped to the door. “Montario?”
“Yeah, babe?”
“Don’t get us killed.”
18.
They took two rented cars to the diner where the meet was scheduled to take place. Kimiyo and Cole left first. She was intent on negotiating Arulio’s release from Atomic Jack without jeopardizing their meeting later that afternoon with the Children of the Apocalyptic Rainbow or her job with Saji Vy.
Cole looked Kimiyo over. She was dressed smartly in a dark blue jacket and skirt, opting to go very corporate for her meeting with the gangsters holding Arulio. Her hair was up and she was sporting expensive sunglasses. That one look told him she was ready for negotiations. She had a small leather case on the seat beside her. It was real leather too, not the synthetic stuff so it had been imported to Earth.
“Is your case from Mars?” He said. Mars had a thriving agricultural trade. Terraforming had left the equator of the planet littered with farm land and ranches.
“Yes. It was gift from Mr. Vy. Do you like it?”
“It’s very nice.” He was trying to gauge her mood. They’d spent some time together last night planning and she had been enthusiastic but since then she had slept and had time to anticipate the meeting. That time could have given her cold feet.
He looked out the window. Olympia was surprisingly like Earth. Cole didn’t know what he had expected but the business district they were driving through could have been plucked from any large city back on the home world. In fact, it looked run down for being built so recently, relatively speaking.
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