by Rick Partlow
The docking ports jutted on a long, armored shaft that stuck out from the end of the rock, which was unlike other space stations Cal had visited. Usually ships docked inside a sheltered bay designed to protect them from micrometeors and solar flares. He didn't need to guess why this one was arranged as it was: when you catered to criminals, smugglers and mobsters, you wouldn't want to chance someone triggering their drives inside and causing a chain reaction that could destroy the whole place.
Ask me how I know, he thought ruefully, remembering his catastrophic escape from the Corporate Security Force station in orbit around Canaan five years ago.
Under the control of the station's computer, their cutter's directional thrusters fired briefly with a banging that sounded like someone was hitting the outside of their hull with a sledgehammer. The little ship slipped in between a cargo shuttle, which was undoubtedly from a larger freighter standing off somewhere out of sensor range, and a courier barely large enough for a Teller-Fox drive; and a docking umbilical snaked out from the port hub to mate with their utility lock.
"Your ship's account has been debited 100 Trade Notes for docking fees," an automated voice announced pleasantly over the cockpit speakers in a voice with a slight Belter accent. "In forty-eight hours, it will be debited again. If you lack the funds to cover the second debit, you will be required to vacate your docking port within two hours. If you fail to do this, your ship will be forfeit to the station management."
"That's harsh," Cal commented as he and Deke unstrapped from their acceleration couches and headed out of the cockpit.
"Any attempt to bring explosives, chemical weapons or biological pathogens aboard the station will be detected," the voice warned, following them as they propelled themselves out through the narrow corridor into the ship's utility bay, "and met with immediate lethal force. All personal weapons are subject to inspection and a non-refundable hundred Trade Note insurance fee, payable upon entry."
"Jesus," Cal said, pulling a pistol belt out of a cabinet and buckling it on. "This place seems more likely to bankrupt us than kill us."
"Like I said," Deke replied with a shrug, "they won't kill us till they have our money...but they're not exactly patient about that."
The docking port beyond the umbilical was cheaply generic, all bare white polymer and dull grey metal without the smallest attempt at decoration or ornamentation. The men and women moving through it were far from generic though, Cal thought. They were a mélange of Skingangers, colorfully-dressed Belters from the Solar asteroid habitations, Pirate World smugglers in their characteristic black leathers and various outworlder black marketeers in an odd collection of styles from a dozen worlds, including Tahni colonies. None of them spared either Deke or him a look as they made their way down the handholds towards the security station.
That was impressive and intimidating. It was basically a large, armored airlock, though from what he could see as the line slowly advanced toward it, they didn't actually cycle the air out. People entered by party, not individually, and the thick doors slid shut behind them; after a few moments the doors opened again to admit the next. Signs all around the tube-shaped corridor warned again not to attempt to smuggle prohibited weapons into the station.
If you did, Cal wondered, would they drain the air from that lock and eject you and the offending contraband into space?
Then it was their turn and he and Deke pushed off the wall and drifted slowly into the open lock. The interior seemed like more bare, featureless metal, but Cal knew that had to conceal some pretty sophisticated scanners. The only visible display was a single rectangle of liquid crystal set in the wall to their right that glowed softly white. He forced himself not to look back when the door slid shut behind them with an ominous solidity and everything went totally silent. The light glowed blood red and everything in the lock turned to crimson.
"Okay," he said to Deke after a moment, "this is one of those times when I really wish you'd make a smart-ass remark."
His old friend snorted at that, and the stolid unhappiness of his expression bent into something approaching a grin.
Then the indicator went green and the opposite door in the chamber slid open with a pneumatic hiss, letting in a light so bright it made Cal squint. Outside, a pair of armored security guards stood anchored to the deck by sticky boots behind a transparent shield that stretched from floor to ceiling. Still as statues, they watched silently from behind mirrored visors, pulse carbines slung across their chest. Cal was sure there were automated security systems in place as well, and the living guards were only for emergency.
"Your account has been debited one thousand Trade Notes for the personal weapons detected by the scanners," a disembodied voice announced over speakers concealed in the walls around them.
"A thousand?" Deke repeated in disbelief. Cal nearly grinned as he saw the calculations going on behind his friend's dark eyes. "You mean you're charging us for each fucking blade of our implant weapons?"
The disembodied voice didn't respond, but one of the guards waved his hand curtly in a "move-along" type gesture. Cal nudged his friend, jerking his head in a motion down the corridor. Deke rolled his eyes, but grabbed a handhold and pushed off down the axial corridor with Cal following behind.
Not like it's your money anyway, he reminded Deke via neurolink.
It's the principle of the thing, the other man grumbled.
They followed the line of incoming traffic to a series of a half dozen large elevators leading upward into the outer levels of the station. From what Cal had heard about Kanesh, the tunnels and habitations had been dug the hard way, with laser drills, small fusion devices and boring machines rather than the energy-intensive method used for Belial. That had involved coring the center of the asteroid, filling the hole with water, then using a kilometers-wide solar reflector to heat the water to the point where it expanded the rock into a hollow tube. He didn't know for sure why Kanesh had been constructed this way, but he would have bet it was because the builders didn't have the funding or security for the thermal expansion method. It would have been costly and embarrassing if some rival had come along and blown apart your big, expensive, flimsy reflector.
Cal tried to avoid bumping into any of the pack of humans and Tahni as they flowed into the lift like a drink poured into a glass. Moving in zero gravity was an art, but luckily his headcomp made it automatic, and he squeezed into a corner next to Deke. There was no warning as it started to move, but he had made sure to point his feet in the direction of the arrows painted on the wall indicating which way was about to become "down." Cal looked around and saw that the lift had no interior controls and its computer hadn't contacted him via his neurolink to ask what floor he wanted. He assumed it was just going to stop at each level until it reached the outermost one.
Great, he grumbled silently to himself. That'll take forever.
"How far are we headed?" he asked Deke, steadying himself against the wall as rotational gravity slowly began to pull them all to the floor.
"Last level," the other man said with a resigned sigh. "Least that's where she should be. It's not like this place has a people-finder system."
Cal snorted but fell silent and observed the crowd around them in a diffuse way that didn't focus on any one of them long enough to attract attention. None seemed threatening---at least not towards him and Deke in particular; they all seemed vaguely threatening in general. Then the lift reached its first stop and about a third of the crowd packed into the car shifted out and was replaced by a slightly smaller group. Cal saw some among the new passengers that seemed to him to be on the station staff; they didn't wear uniforms, but their clothes seemed less casual and more utilitarian.
They also seemed pale, drawn and generally unhealthy. He idly wondered what the pay was like. It had to be pretty damned good to get someone to work out here at the ass end of nowhere in a place packed with criminals. Or maybe the staff were even worse criminals and couldn't get work anywhere else.
&nbs
p; It took nearly twenty minutes for the lift to reach the last publically-accessible level of the asteroid habitation, far enough out towards the rim that rotational gravity was at near Earth normal. Most of the pack in the elevator poured out onto the outermost level and Deke and Cal followed them, holding back to let the rest out ahead. When they stepped out, Cal took a moment to look around.
The interior of Kanesh was dim and claustrophobic, the ceiling low and the walls close, with no attempt made to make it look like anything but a cave. Even the harsh advertisements of the restaurants, bars and clubs that stretched down the corridor couldn't seem to allay the chill darkness that settled over everything. The noise of the crowd moving through the streets, the dull roar of conversation from inside the half-enclosed businesses, the music that carried from the clubs, it all seemed oddly muted.
Cal leaned against the bare plastic beside the lift call panel, then recoiled instinctively as the sleeve of his jacket came away slimy and wet from the layer of condensation that coated the surface of the wall.
"This way," Deke said, gesturing off to their right.
Cal followed him past a line of open-front shops selling raw bulk food for shipboard use, machine-fabricated clothes, and several selling spare parts for fabricators, food processors and various shipboard filtration systems. They advertised their wares with signs that glowed in dull reds and yellows, while the attendants sat and watched with an air of vague irritation and ennui.
"Who runs this place?" Cal asked Deke, voice pitched low. "I mean, who owns all this?" He gestured at the shops and the entertainment centers.
"It's kind of a cartel," Deke told him, shrugging. "The people who dug this place out sold concessions to various...business interests. So, one family controls the security, one controls the shops, one controls the bars and they split the fees they charge on deals that go down here."
"And by business interests," Cal presumed, grinning tightly, "you mean criminal syndicates?"
"I wouldn't use that term here," Deke cautioned him. "People get a bit sensitive."
"I'm certain they do," Cal returned dryly.
"Here it is," Deke said, nodding to the left. Cal followed his motion and saw a business that, unlike the others, was fully enclosed by cheap, thin, plastic walls except for a narrow doorway that glowed softly with very little interior light.
The small, subdued sign that was inlaid above the door advertised: Pleasure Doll Rental.
"Seriously?" Cal shot Deke an aggrieved glare, coming to an abrupt halt in the street. A pair of tall, gangly Belters behind them nearly ran into his back, cursing as they dodged around him.
"Hey, it's not my fault," Deke protested, hands raised palm up. "It's just the business she happens to own."
"Yeah, and how the hell did you meet her, Deke?" Cal wanted to know.
"She's a facilitator," Deke insisted, turning a bit red. "She arranges deals between families."
"From here?" Cal said, eyes narrowing in disbelief.
"It's not like I created the arrangement," Deke grumbled. "Do you want to go in or do you want to wait here for me?"
"Jesus Christ," Cal sighed, but gestured for Deke to go ahead, then followed him through the door.
"I can't help if your backwoods religion makes you all hung up about sex," Deke muttered.
Cal withheld comment, eyes darting about the dim recesses of the shop. There was a display shelf that ran the length of the wall closest to the door, with over a dozen models of the very realistic looking (and feeling, or so he was told) AI-controlled pleasure dolls, ranging from adult human to pre-pubescent Tahni, with just about every possibility in between. Signs advertised variable hair and skin color, voices, accents and temperaments. The closest one, a replica of an adult male human, dressed and adorned like a Belter, smiled and winked at them as they entered and Cal tried not to meet its gaze; he didn't want to strike up a conversation with the thing.
On the opposite side of the shop, further away from the door and stretching out in an L shape that took them around the back, were a series of doors secured by locking panels, and set in what was clearly soundproof material an order of magnitude more expensive than the cheap plastic of the rest of the shop. He knew what was going on behind those doors, but he really didn't want to think about it.
Equidistant between the doors and the display shelves was a single desk, featureless and cheaply made, and a single attendant seated at it. He was gaunt and sallow, with long, stringy brown hair streaked with gray and lines etched into his long face by years not reversed by the nanites and anti-aging treatments available in more civilized systems. Cal had seen it before, but it still made his skin crawl. Even on a world as parochial as Canaan, about as far removed from Earth and the central government as you could be in the Commonwealth, all citizens still had access to basic health care. This guy was probably not much older than he was, but looked like death warmed over.
"What model and how long?" the old-looking man asked, not looking up from the display on his hand-held datalink. That was also an indication of how far into the ass-end of beyond they were: even chawners on the long-term dole back in the larger colonies at least had contact lenses with data displays.
"I need to speak to Lixbed," Deke told him.
The man did look up at that, his eyes narrowing, mouth twisting into even more of a frown.
"Lixbed isn't available."
"Annabelle Lee told me she'd be here," Deke said, smoothly enough that Cal knew it had to be some sort of pass-phrase.
The attendant's frown didn't change, though the look in his eyes became a bit more curious.
"Annabelle hasn't been around here for a few years," he said.
"Neither have I," Deke replied with a shrug. "Tell Lixbed that I'm still waiting for that load of Tahni statuary."
That made the attendant's face wrinkle into something that might have been curiosity.
"Just a minute," he said, pushing up from his desk with a squeak of cheap plastic and stepping through a door set in the rear wall.
"Who the hell would want Tahni art?" Cal asked him quietly as they waited.
"There's a market for almost everything," Deke said in a low monotone, eyes locked on the door. Cal glanced back at the computerized facsimile of a twelve year old human boy smiling at him seductively with dead, dark eyes and shuddered by way of agreement.
When the attendant returned, the look on his long, drawn face was still curious and now a bit suspicious.
"She'll see you," the man said, sitting back down. He jerked a thumb at the door, then went back to his datalink, seemingly losing interest in them.
Deke moved around the desk and Cal followed him, hesitating to scan behind them one more time. When he turned back, he could already sense the three heartbeats on the other side of the wall and assumed there'd be guards; so, he wasn't really surprised when he stepped through the door behind Deke into a large, well-lit and well-appointed office and found himself staring into the muzzles of a pair of pulse carbines. The two men that held them were very business-like and professional in matching black tunics and trousers, their heads depilated and eyes covered by mirrored glasses that probably had infrared and thermal filters. Cal wrestled down an instinct that would have tossed the guns away and killed both men before the lasers had hit the ground; Deke hadn't acted and there was probably a reason for that.
"It's all right, boys," a deep, throaty female voice said from behind the two gunmen. Cal glanced over and saw that it belonged to a tall, handsome woman who looked to be about his age but was probably much older. She had that air of someone who'd been around a long time and he guessed she, unlike the more working-class members of the population here, had access to age-delaying medical technology. She was dressed for the part as well; her colorfully fashionable sari looked as if it had been personally tailored and grown in a nanite vat. She was leaning casually against the wall, arms folded, an amused expression on her lean, angular face.
"Deke here is an old friend of mi
ne," she said. "And anyway, if he wanted to, he could kill both of you his bare hands."
Cal didn't know if that made the guards feel better or not, but they backed off, their carbines lowering.
The woman pushed away from the wall and stepped over to Deke, hand brushing idly at a lock of gold-tinted brown hair that had fallen down over her right eye. She smiled and draped an arm over Deke's shoulder, kissing him on the cheek fondly. She was centimeters taller than Deke and looked to have spent her formative years in a low gravity environment.
"It's been too long, Deacon," she said, her tone sounding surprisingly genuine. "I'd heard rumors that you've given up the outlaw life, turned over a new leaf." She tilted her head towards him and grinned. "Tell Auntie Lixbed it ain't so."
"To be honest," Deke said, slipping an arm around her waist to give her a quick hug before disentangling himself, "life has become a bit complicated, Lixbed. I hope you and Reynaldo are doing well."
The woman affected a pout, shaking her head. "Unfortunately, Reynaldo became disenchanted with the isolation here and sought his prospects on a freighter headed for Thunderhead. All my men are deserting me, Deacon!" She cast an eye towards Cal and the smile returned. "But tell me, who is your wonderfully short and muscular friend here?"
"Lixbed Mastropolo," Deke said, his tone and face suddenly formal, "this is perhaps my oldest and certainly best friend, Caleb Mitchell, from Canaan, where the gravity is high and the farmers are not."
"A pleasure to meet you, Ms. Mastropolo," Cal said, stepping up beside Deke.
"The pleasure is all mine, Mr. Mitchell," the tall woman offered him a hand and Cal took it. He was unsure for a moment whether he should shake it or kiss it, but he settled on grasping it tightly for a moment before releasing it.
Lixbed scanned him up and down appreciatively before turning back to Deke. "Come in, you two, please have a seat."
The office was, Cal observed, a sharp contrast from the shop that fronted it, and from the neighborhood that housed it. The walls were sturdy-looking and, if he wasn't mistaken, backed by a core of biphase carbide that could stop everything up to and including a Gatling laser. A large painting---not a 3-D image or even a flat screen display but an actual, physical painting---decorated the longest wall: a water color of a child sitting in a golden field under the light of a star that might have been the Sun.