by Ginger Booth
Floki nodded, pursing his beak solemnly. “Doorways are a tight fit. I believe I have a different psychic impact on people as well. Do you find people fear you because you’re tall?” He’d deepened his voice to a tenor, from its original chirpy soprano.
“Sometimes,” Cope returned compassionately. “Ooh, let me see these hands!” He appreciated a new rubbery five-fingered appendage, attached to a flesh-like arm. Nico must have bought them from a Saggy. Mahina medical approaches regrew the missing parts. A convenient rack between the extrude-an-arm holes supplied alternate ‘hand’ attachments. He was glad to see the bird hadn’t sacrificed utility for social niceties. Floki’s precision waldos and power drill served him well on Sylvan.
They shook hands, Floki’s lidded eyes and quirked beak looking smug. Cope felt the impact of his added height, as though the bird grew up mentally as well as physically. He probably is. Growing up fast.
Nico landed, bashful smile flashing bright white in his chocolate face, darker skinned than his old man. They fell into a hug.
“You take care of Ben, right? I worry.”
Nico rolled his eyes. “Of course, Dad. He seems fine!”
“And uh, Floki’s dad?”
“Bloki is banned from the fleet,” Nico acknowledged, twisting an ear stud. “I wouldn’t break that rule. Dad Ben might strand me on Sanctuary. Hey, did you know Quire is staying behind on MO?” He didn’t meet Cope’s eye while he said it.
“Oh? Who’s housekeeper?”
“Tikki. Dad, don’t get awkward. It’s just Quire has a lady friend on MO. They’re going to make it bloom like Denali.”
Ben had a fling once with the Denali housekeeper Tikki. Who went on to join the saboteurs to ensure the Sylvan colony failed. Acid sarcasm dripped from Cope’s voice. “Who’d be so unreasonable?”
“I mean he wasn’t Dad Ben’s choice. Don’t say goodbye with a fight. Please?”
Cope grimaced. “Right. I should shove off.”
Nico folded his arms and glowered at him. “Kiss him goodbye, Dad.”
“Yes, by all means.” Ben stomped up the ramp behind him. “Kiss everyone goodbye and shove off, Cope. T minus 12, captain signs off on external inspection.” This last was to Remi, who logged the approval. External inspection was easier here on the moon than going EVA at Mahina Orbital, their first stop.
Cope grabbed his husband, swung him backward over his arm, and kissed him firmly on the mouth. “Love you, bye.”
An irate Ben practically tore his husband’s work shirt hauling himself back to standing. “I meant them, not me. Love you, bye. Get lost. Got places to go, things to do.”
“Not with Tikki,” Cope suggested, as lightly as he could manage. He liked Tikki, too. He just didn’t like Ben on the same ship with the attractive male geisha.
Ben batted his eyes blandly. “Noted.”
“Forgive and forgot, huh? Sabotaging Sylvan?”
Ben shrugged. “He’s busted ass for us ever since, Cope. He’s up at MO deep cleaning our transports. So Jules could take the twins south to visit her parents. Hopes to get them arranged marriages.”
Ben leaned against his husband, casting an appraising look at Nico.
Cope played along, and cocked his head at Nico. “Huh!”
Floki squeaked a chortle.
“Don’t even think it!” Nico growled.
Cope grinned crookedly and flung an arm across his son’s shoulders. But he returned his attention to Ben. “And you’ll be home within the month?”
“I’ll call with an ETA. Care to watch takeoff with Sass? Thrive’s over there.” He pointed down the cargo ramp.
“Fine, I’m going.” He caught Remi, Nico, and Floki by eye. “Take care of him.” They each nodded in mock solemnity. Ben squeezed his hand.
And he split, with a quick wave to the catwalk. He knew everyone aboard, of course. They’d worked together for months on the Denali evacuation. He’d flown with Ben most of the time, for years.
Watching takeoff with Sass for company wasn’t a bad idea. She set her ramp down. They sat chatting companionably as Ben left without him for the stars again. One last bright cyan flare marked his egress through the ozone layer. And he was gone.
“He’ll be fine, Cope,” Sass purred, squeezing his hand in reassurance, the same as Ben had done. “It was probably just the nanites getting zapped.”
But that wasn’t what bothered him now. He wondered if Ben was right. Maybe he’d be happier engineering in space than running his company. But he couldn’t relinquish his intellectual property, their ships, everything he’d built Thrive Spaceways into.
Then he’d better get busy. Vacation was over. He rose and dusted off his pants, and thanked Sass for the visit.
“Any progress on meeting payroll?” she asked hesitantly.
“Working on it,” he vowed. Hell if he knew how.
“Cowardly,” Ben noted on the bridge to his ‘copilot,’ the physicist Teke. “You’re hiding from Cope.”
“You need a science officer,” Teke returned. “Eli’s a botanist. Not the right man on this job.”
“Hugo Silva is my science officer for Loki. And you’re overlooking one key point. Texan.” The captain skewered him with a hairy eyeball. “I’m pissed at you too. Just wasn’t ready to talk about it. Yet here you are.”
Ben scrubbed his face, then checked on his automated approach-and-fire pattern to the orbital. The guns seemed to be doing an adequate job blowing a path through the asteroid weather today. He thought of it as weather, medium rocky. Other days, other presets, depending on the size and composition of moonlets most recently collided in the neighborhood. That could change in a heartbeat. But between the automated guns and Ben’s two decades of traversing Mahina’s orbit, he had programs to handle almost anything at his fingertips.
Teke said, “Ben, I swear, I didn’t know the Denali gene lab meant to create children. I sent your genome, and Cope’s, because they were studying your gene mod, the focus ability. Two variants, yours and Cope’s.”
“You were pretty young then. Twenty-three?”
“Earlier. Later they wanted Elise’s, to gauge the genetic drift between the populations, Mahina and Sagamore. Plus sample paddy data, and then Remi as a token aristocrat. Did you know the Sags genetically altered their slaves?”
“I suspected,” Ben allowed.
“Did you meet Texan?”
“No.”
Teke teased, “Speaking of cowardly.”
Ben let silence reign a few minutes. “That hurt, Teke. Our kids are mostly grown and done. And surprise! We have more. We don’t know how to feel. They’re raised as Denali. We mean nothing to them. But they mean something to us.”
Teke lounged away from him in the gunner’s seat. “It’s no accident they didn’t tell you. I convinced them to let Sock meet other kids like himself. He felt alienated on Mahina. Too smart for a settler. It’s hard to be different. You and Cope know that as well as anybody.”
“Yeah. You’re right. I need to meet Texan. With Cope. And you.”
“Fine. Change of topic? Sagamore wants Loki here, Ben. If we’re bringing this new power into the rings, you’d better be damned sure it’s aligned with Mahina, not Sagamore. Because they’ll wine and dine – however you win over an AI.”
“Yup. Approaching MO. Hail them.” Ben flicked the traffic lanes onto his screen, feeling the familiar frisson of satisfaction. His first time at the original dilapidated pizza box of an orbital, they were the first ship to visit in months. Nowadays, MO inhabited a good-sized asteroid. Small mining craft zipped everywhere.
And eight of the nine larger ships in port were his.
Old habits reasserted. The biological children were Cope’s problem moon-side. These spaceships were Ben’s, and he was off on a fresh adventure. He breathed out, feeling perfectly normal.
Which bothered him. Though not to the point of crying, thank God.
The new nanites had stolen his unruly emotions away again. He trie
d to talk Yang-Yang into toning down the endocrine moderation. The technician refused, on the grounds that stress hormones damaged the body. Bottom line, Kassidy’s favor only covered restoring his original nanites, not a new custom job.
“Tikki, Ben,” Ben hailed his new housekeeper. “Headed in now. Meet you at the docks?”
“Welcome to MO. We’re hiding on Hopeful.” The transports and tender sat moored together within the orbital’s asteroid interdiction, cheaper rent than the docks.
“Hiding?” And didn’t that sound ominous. “Quire’s farewell party is tonight, right?” He’d asked the housekeeper to book the event.
“Yes. Grotto. Eighteen hundred.” The housekeeper’s response was clipped.
“Private party,” Ben confirmed.
“I doubt that.”
The captain couldn’t play twenty questions with the housekeeper during approach. Besides, he could see for himself that Lavelle’s Gossamer out of Hell’s Bells was the other PO-3 in dock. The Saggy was bound to crash his party. He signed off with Tikki, and dispatched Zan on the shuttle to retrieve the crew from Hopeful.
12
The Grotto remained a favored watering hole on Mahina Orbital, though its location shifted over the years as it outgrew its asteroid-hewn cubic. The new Denali influence showed, with particolored creatures flitting through palm trees surrounding the centerpiece, wavelets lapping a pocket beach. In this latest incarnation, the wading pool forked into streams between high tables. Tropical sun blazed from above the wall-sized display screen of an island vista, dimming to intimate moonlight through the fronds in the back corners.
No, it wasn’t a private party. The place was mobbed. Tikki pointed toward a corner he’d supposedly reserved. But since that lay farthest from the splash pool, Ben’s people opted for the luau torches and hammocks by the beach.
Ben hopped an inlet to greet Quire, man of the hour, standing barefoot in the sand. He wore nothing but an authentic Denali loincloth. His lady friend Meera was a near match, Denali bald with Buddha figure, though she wore a modest bandeau above her loincloth. She offered prayer fingers and retreated to a table of similar middle-aged women.
“I hoped to get to know her,” Ben complained. “I mean, she seems nice. How long have you two…?”
“This is our first meeting in person,” Quire explained.
“Huh. So, do you like her? In person.”
“Very much so. A beautiful soul.” Quire nodded gently. “I chose to take vacation because for the first time, I think I can. And Tikki needs my place.”
Ben sighed. “I wouldn’t kick him out of Spaceways.” Tempting as that might be.
“They hate him, you know,” Quire offered sadly. “The Denali.”
Ben often had trouble switching gears to talk to Quire. The frenzy of the takeoff, the rush of threading through asteroids, docking, getting ready to party and then – Zen stillness. He couldn’t slow down that fast. “Tikki’s fine. This is your party!”
His brow furrowed faintly. “When have I ever wanted a party?”
Ben blinked at him. Right. “I care about you, old friend. I’ll miss you.” He exchanged a warm bear-hug with the man. Over his well-padded shoulder, the captain caught a glimpse of Remi being waylaid by Lavelle and – damn! – Pollan, the orbital’s chief of manufacturing and human rat finks.
But Quire was his anchor, his rock, his steady homemaker. Just as his heart sped up, Ben forced himself to stay put and inquire about the man’s hopes and visions for gardening in the tunnels of this utilitarian chunk of rock. He tried not to fidget.
Yeah, five minutes was enough of that. They traded another hug, vowed to visit whenever Merchant was in port, and Ben escaped the interlude. Tikki had the party aspects well in hand. Ben strode purposefully toward Lavelle and clapped a hand on his shoulder from behind.
Lavelle leapt from his chair to grasp Ben in another bear-hug and kiss his cheeks in the exuberant Saggy way. “Ben! Join us! We must talk about Loki!”
“Must we?” Ben asked Remi.
The engineer looked puzzled. “But of course! They are excited, Hell’s Bells, MO, SO.”
“And Sagamore itself!” Lavelle assured him. “Merde! This could be the end of slavery at last! Garçon! Another round, and a drink for my good friend Benjy!” He too met the young man before he shed the diminutive.
“And what that AI could do for the orbitals!” Pollan gushed. “Think of it! No more janitors, just robots! No more three-day shifts out on the skiffs for the miners! Let a robot do that, monitor from here!”
“Have you thought that through?” Ben countered. “You’d lose jobs, Pollan. Besides, I don’t know that Loki wants to do your chores. Or rather, if he did, would he rule Mahina Orbital?”
Lavelle laughed. “Of course, no! We don’t ask that he operate the robots, only create them. And we command them!”
“Have you programmed robots long?” Ben argued. “We always had them on Mahina. Yet we’ve done little with them.” In Mahina Actual, cleaning robots scuttled the floors. And he didn’t see much difference between a robotic assembly line and a printer. But outside the urb citadel, among the settlers, manual labor ruled. “I assumed that was because humans needed the jobs.”
“Expensive metals,” Pollan claimed. “And tools to make the tools to make the robots.”
Ben noted sourly that Pollan didn’t lack for metals on the orbital. Hell’s Bells even less so – revolutionary shenanigans aside, the space platform’s base industry was resource extraction from the rings. He never had an easy time dealing with the man, ever since he essentially marinated Cope in radioactive heavy water when they first met. Cope refused to hold a grudge, but Ben didn’t trust him.
He turned to Remi. “And you? Moonlighting?” That was the ticket. Extract Remi and retreat to the crew party.
The engineer’s eyebrows rose. “Do I have time? Wonderful! Pierre –”
“No, we leave at daybreak,” Ben confirmed quellingly. “We should –”
Pollan interrupted. “You don’t look crazy.”
Lavelle squeezed his shoulders. “Oui! Benjy, so good to see you! The great Acosta, pilot error! I think they lock you up with a psycho for years!”
Ben glowered at Remi. Who didn’t appear to feel guilty. “Shrink,” he suggested, a word he still couldn’t pronounce right. “By psycho they mean a crazy. Ben, he is not crazy. Just overworked. Ben, Pierre tells me Gorky wants to sell his ship.”
That riveted Ben’s attention. “Why?”
Lavelle mock-shuddered. “If the great Benjy can fail, so can we all! Terrifying! Gorky, he thinks he is old. Getting slow.”
“Sell it to who? You?” Ben asked.
The old pirate waved a hand. “Compete with you? You have a flock!”
“Fleet,” Remi suggested.
Lavelle dismissed this with a flick of his fingers. “I think Gorky, he will sell to Carver Cartwright. A Sag in Schuyler. Carver, he is annoyed. You and me don’t fly back and forth to Hell’s Bells on a reliable schedule.”
“Never heard of him,” Ben objected.
“You have,” Remi corrected him. “He is no captain. Aloha Fret, import-export.”
“Oh, him, yeah.” Ben recalled the company, if not the individual. Lately Abel lined up his freight runs. “So who’ll fly the Boobs?” The ship’s name was actually Heavenly Bodies, but Gorky himself called her Heavy Boobs.
“You can’t keep all these captains forever, Benjy!” Lavelle protested. “Six transports. They are useless in the rings!”
“Yeah, but so are their captains,” Ben countered. “I mean, they’re great. But not asteroid runners. Except for Zan and Judge. Sass, Abel, me. Hell, you think this Cartwright will make a play for Judge?” His eyes narrowed, gauging Judge across the room. The old miner had fallen in with evil friends from his tenure on MO.
Lavelle shrugged. “We didn’t expect to see you flying again, little Benjy! I train my people! And Zan, maybe he prefers a Sag crew? To escape his own pe
ople? You forgive his treason on Sylvan. But his own people? Never!”
Pollan pursed his lips judiciously. “I wouldn’t give a crap myself. But Lavelle has a point. Zan is persona non grata on MO. Look how Wilder hovers to cover his ass.” Unlike the more recent arrivals, Pollan was an urb reject from MO’s years as an MA penal colony. His educated vocabulary intimidated the new settler miners, and impressed the Denali not at all. “He’s useless to you as a captain, Acosta.”
“One of my best friends,” Ben countered. “The jerk. His berth’s in no danger at Spaceways.”
“A monopoly, little Ben?” Lavelle needled. “Got to catch them all? Mahina is not the only moon of Pono. Speaking of! Where will you install Loki?”
Ben eyed his rival uneasily. The truth was, he’d intended to position Loki in the outer reaches of the rings, on a nice rock ball like Mahina with plenty of water ice, but not enough radiation from the gas giant to melt it. Pono lay just outside the Goldilocks zone where the Aloha star could melt water, but compensated by cranking out plenty of heat itself.
But that placed Loki closer to Sagamore than Mahina. No one accused Ben of patriotism – he never missed Mahina – but his instincts for self-preservation were first-rate. I need Loki closer to our moon than theirs. Unfortunately, Mahina was about as close to Pono as it was safe to get. The radiation levels in the inward rings were not conducive to an AI’s computational health. “Haven’t decided.”
Remi frowned and started to say something. Mercifully, he took the hint when Ben scowled back at him. “Is this an accident, that Lavelle is here to see us off, Remi?”
“I mentioned… I stayed with Carver… No,” Remi agreed regretfully.
“Flew in specially to see you!” Lavelle confirmed. “We are worried. Who else but we to stop the great Benjy, if he is not safe to fly yet?”
This comment was beneath response. But Ben retorted anyway. “All those captains I have? My husband, my business partners? Him?” He pointed at his engineer.