by J. S. Morin
The patrons around Yomin were mainly offworlders like herself. Growing up on Earth and serving in Earth Navy, she hadn’t been outnumbered by tesuds before. By the quick count of her datalens, it was eighteen humans, twenty-five tesuds, a laaku, and six vish kinah. She’d been surprised to see the little carnivores in a noodle bar, but then she noticed the custom entry on the local menu: squid noodles.
To each species, their own.
Yomin slurped her soda through a straw and wondered if she had time before the next tram to hit the washroom. In the illustrious history of the Mobius, Yomin could envision the stories that would be told of the day Yomin let a hundred-fifty thousand terras sneak past while she was tinkling.
The tram schedule seemed to be “whenever we’ve got passengers,” but it still took a finite amount of time to make the journey up and back to the Temple of the Half-Year Sun. It had last departed eighteen minutes ago, according to Yomin’s datalens. With a six-minute scenic ride, it could be back any second.
To kill some time, she decided to report in. “Amy, you there?” Yomin asked, raising the Mobius cockpit on the comm.
“Roger that,” Amy replied in clipped military tones.
“Cut the brass-polishing,” Yomin replied. “Just wanted to check in. Everything kosher back on the boat?”
“More or less. Radio silence is bugging the shit out of me, though,” Amy reported.
Yomin sighed. “Know what you mean. I’m parked in the Noodle-O-Rama, watching the tram station for them to come back.”
“Any sign of Brewster?”
“Girl, you think I’d be bitching about being bored if I’d seen that lowlife?”
“I share quarters with Carl. He’d do anything to set up a good punch line. He could be sitting on Brewster’s smoking corpse and ask me to record a live feed from some comedy show on the omni. It warps the way you approach a conversation.”
“Well,” Yomin replied, wishing now that she’d headed for the washroom instead of biding her time on the comm. “Nice to know I’ve gotten lumped in with the galaxy’s least repentant liar.”
“And…?”
Yomin clenched her jaw. “And I haven’t seen Brewster, Carl, Esper, or Rai Kub since I’ve been sitting here. I’m crawling out of my skull.”
“Better bored than worried,” Amy said with a nervous chuckle.
Oh. Well, that made a little more sense, at least. “He’s got Rai Kub and Esper with him. If the stuunji doesn’t convince anyone not to give him trouble, Esper will make them regret their choice. Carl’s fine.”
There was a pause, and Amy’s voice came back quieter. “I know.”
“Damn right, you know. Carl’s a lotta things, but he’s smooth under pressure. He’s got things under control up there.”
# # #
Carl’s breath dragged a cheese grater over his lungs with every inhale and exhale. One of these days, he swore, he’d get back in fighting shape. No more of this wheezing and gasping for breath every time he had to run more than a few meters.
The Temple of the Half-Year Sun was too fucking big. Stupid, grandiose, sun-worshipping otters. Why couldn’t they build their holy temple on a nice flat beach, starport adjacent and somewhere tropical?
“Want me to run ahead?” Esper asked, jogging along beside Carl.
He would have loved to pretend that she was magically easing her stride and buoying herself so she was as light as cotton candy. But the fact of the matter was that she was ten years younger than him and occasionally exercised.
“Yeah,” Carl agreed, more nodding than enunciating the word.
“Don’t wait for me,” Rai Kub called from the back. “Return for me when you finish. I’m just slowing you all down.”
The stuunji wasn’t winded; he was just slow.
“Wouldn’t. Dream. Of it,” Carl gasped out.
A brilliant idea struck the Mobius captain. Stopping and propping a hand on his knee for support, he waved Rai Kub over and waited a few seconds for the stuunji to catch up.
“Carry. Me,” Carl ordered. At least, he hoped he ordered. If the big lug thought he was joking, it would have been poor timing.
But the ship’s security officer apparently knew an order when he heard one. “Oh, of course.”
In one smooth motion, the stuunji scooped Carl up and threw him over a shoulder.
Had they been in a more civilized part of the galaxy, this was the sort of scene that could have ruined a reputation. Carl Ramsey, war hero, racing star, notorious outlaw, was being carried like a disaster victim on the shoulder of a bipedal rhinoceros. There would be looping video of the incident. Users on Vid-Blast would rate him, and the text comments would roast his dignity on a spit.
But this was Agos VI, tesuds were mostly inoffensive people, and Carl doubted that most of the otters even had an account to access the omni.
When they arrived at the tram station, Esper was arguing with the conductor. It actually took a great deal of effort to argue with a tesud in a service-industry job, but Esper had managed to engage one in a heated—for Esper at least—debate.
“I know you have other passengers waiting,” Esper said. “And I know that they have places to be, too. But here come my friends now. Just give them thirty seconds, and we can be underway.”
A few human tourists grumbled at the sight of the stuunji. More snickered at the sight of Carl being carried like a rag doll.
By now, Carl was starting to catch his breath. With a couple firm slaps on the back to catch Rai Kub’s attention, he decided it was time to end the free ride. “I’m good. Set me down.”
Gently as can be, the stuunji returned Carl to his feet. This way, Carl could hold his head high as he boarded the tram car, possibly even pretend that he hadn’t received any such assistance and that it was preposterous to imply otherwise. He even started fashioning a Carl Who Walked Here By Himself Like a Big Boy.
Then Carl realized that when Rai Kub set him down, it was directly into the tram car.
# # #
Scenery was for people with more time than a pressing need to be somewhere. As the tram wended its way down the mountainside, all Carl could think of was What’s-his-name Brew-Guy flying off with his payday and the trinket the otters were so sad about losing.
In fairness, Carl was more worked up over the loss of the payday, but that guy Pavel was just so pitiful about the whole theft that the grizzled old outlaw felt bad for him.
How many trams had been back to the port between the theft and now? Five? Fifty? A hundred or more?
But Jono The Relic Thief still had his ship parked planetside. If the knickknack got stolen overnight, there must have been other considerations before he could make orbit.
Was the guy waiting for the heat to die down? Sounded like a bad play. The tesuds weren’t bumbling administrators. They’d be liable to scan any ship leaving the planet, maybe even board them.
Maybe Jojo Brewski had a second ship or booked private transport offworld? That would have been a bold move. That ship of his was worth more than the payday for the job. But if he’d sold it while he was planetside…
None of this mattered. Carl was just guessing, and he didn’t even know enough to make a good guess. This was all just true-crime fan fiction until someone started figuring out exactly what had gone wrong.
He wished there wasn’t a crowd in the tram car. Kicking some ideas around would have made Carl feel better, even if it was with perhaps the two least guileful members of the crew—with only Shoni giving either of them a run for their money.
The tram pulled into the station, and Carl was the first one out. Yomin hadn’t been waiting for them at the temple end of the line; he expected that she would have been right there. Carl’s ear itched to hook on his personal comm. His thigh felt naked without the weight of his old blaster bouncing by his side.
“Dammit!” Carl swore, looking all around for signs of Yomin and their gear. “Where is she?”
There were times when the captain of t
he Mobius was able to push aside the long and sordid history of techs aboard his ship. But times like this, he had visions of Lucas, Martin, and every other small-time tech wrangler who’d either bailed on them, robbed them, or stabbed them in the back.
“Here she comes,” Esper said, pointing back toward the pocket of restaurants and stores that sold cheap local junk.
Yomin trotted along, carrying their gear, including Carl’s winter coat. In his anger and worry, Carl had managed to ignore the cold without even having to imagine up a Carl Who’s Not Worried About Hypothermia. But just seeing the garment in Yomin’s hands was enough to blow arctic winds straight through to his bones.
Of course, the actual arctic winds weren’t helping, either.
“Where were you?” Carl snapped, grabbing the coat away from Yomin the instant she was within arm’s reach.
“Grabbing lunch,” Yomin replied. “Or breakfast. Who the hell can tell this far north?”
“We need a comm,” Esper said. She waved a finger from Yomin’s pile of gadgetry toward Carl. “Give him a comm.”
“Something wrong?” Yomin asked, seemingly nonplussed.
After sealing up his coat and activating the mini-reactor inside, Carl allowed a few seconds of bliss as the heating fluid coursed through the liner and chased away the chill from his bones with torches and pitchforks. Then he ransacked the tangled mess of gear in Yomin’s unresisting hands until he found his comm link.
“Amy? Amy, are you there? Johnny Brutal already got the trinket.”
“So good hearing from you,” Amy replied. “Engines powering up. We’ll be ready to go the instant you get here.”
“Come on,” Yomin said, strolling off in the direction of the starport.
Carl wanted to run, but his leg muscles still burned from his last attempt. “Why aren’t you in more of a rush? Did you not hear what I just told Amy?”
“Oh, I heard just fine,” Yomin said. “And if you want to run like headless chickens, by all means, do. But it won’t matter now. The Harpoon Gale left atmosphere fifteen minutes ago.”
# # #
Carl stumbled through the cargo bay at what he had left of a run. His legs told him that there would be hell to pay for this later, but Carl could live with that. What he couldn’t live with was a hundred and fifty thousand terras, in untraceable hardcoin, flitting away into the Black Ocean, never to be seen again.
Roddy was waiting by the cargo bay door. The laaku gave a sloppy salute as Carl flew past. He raised the ramp behind the temple task force as their captain brought up the rear.
The grated metal stairs rang like gongs under Carl’s feet. The single flight was more a mountain to climb than the whole rotten otter temple. His arms did as much work to carry him up, using the handrails as a climber’s rope.
In the common room, the holo-projector was paused, frozen as a 20th-century gangster aimed a gun at some poor sap’s head. Right then, Carl felt a pang of sympathy for the sap; he was at the mercy of some gangster who’d gotten the drop on him, too.
“Get. Ground control. Clearance,” Carl panted out as he stumbled into the cockpit.
Through the forward window, he could see that they were already off the ground.
“Already ahead of you, captain,” Amy reported with a smart salute.
Carl scowled. What was with all the saluting? Two was more than he’d gotten in a month since they left Ithaca.
Collapsing onto the back of the co-pilot’s headrest, Carl took a few slow breaths to steady his burning lungs. “What. Happened?”
“You were up in the mountains, sightseeing, when Jonus Brewster punched his ticket for orbit,” Amy replied.
Carl snapped his fingers. “Brewster. I knew it was something beer related. Why didn’t you try to get him picked up by planetary security? A finder’s fee was probably our best bet to turn this job into terras.”
Amy shrugged. “You weren’t on comm, so I had to make an executive decision.”
Not what he’d hoped to hear. Carl squeezed his eyes shut. There were times when Amy seemed like the perfect partner in crime. She had a calibrated moral compass, but she didn’t give a waste reclaim cartridge about the law. Right and Wrong crossed Legal and Illegal on an entirely different axis.
But her instincts still needed work.
Carl lurched over and kissed her atop the head. “It’s OK, sweetie. We’ll let Yomin dig deeper into that computer core. We must have something in there we can cash out.”
“You think it might have the transmitter frequency for the tracker on the Harpoon Gale?” Amy asked innocently.
It was about then that Carl began to suspect a ruse. “What tracker? Did we know all along that Carter had bugged Beerman’s ship?”
“Carter didn’t,” Amy clarified, then slowly turned to fix Carl with a mischievous grin, taking her eyes from the sparse orbital traffic as they left atmosphere. “We did.”
Carl cocked an eyebrow.
“I got to thinking what might happen if Brewster left Agos VI while you were radio silent,” Amy explained. “There wasn’t a whole lot we could do. We’d look suspicious as hell tailing him into astral. And even if planetary security didn’t intercept us in the process, it still would have meant leaving the four of you behind.”
“With ya so far.”
“So,” Amy continued. “I think I interrupted some sort of ‘interlude,’ but I convinced Roddy to sneak over to the Harpoon Gale’s berth and plant a tracking device on it.”
Heedless of the implications to navigational safety, Carl threw himself into Amy’s lap and kissed her.
# # #
Life was better with a goal. Amy had spent six years hunting for the elusive ENV Odysseus after leaving Earth Navy, and the years had disappeared in a blink.
Months of drifting and languorous colony vacationing had left her antsy. Even the Faendral Rock and Agos VI raids had mostly involved her sitting with the engines hot, ready to hit orbit the second the job was done.
This… this was what got Scarecrow to emerge from hiding deep in the recesses of Amy’s psyche. Steering yoke in hand. Intercept course plotted. Ambush point selected. This was a mission for her.
Roddy’s tracker—or Archie’s, if you wanted to go back to the original owner—was reporting the Harpoon Gale on a direct course for a nowhere space station. Orion Space Station Echo Nine was a galactic-grade dive. Lax security, frequent changes in management, and limited access to ARGO battle groups made it a viable site for a showdown, a shakedown, and a throw down.
Yet, that was still more than the Mobius was hoping to find on the far end of this deal.
Thanks to Esper’s astral skills, the Mobius was drifting lazily at half engine power, 9.39 astral units deep. They were nonetheless rocketing past the smuggler with his illegally modified 7.5 AU star-drive like he was standing still.
“How much run-up you thinking of giving him?” Carl asked.
Amy jumped. She’d been so focused on adjusting their course to match the trajectory of the tracker that she hadn’t heard him come up behind her. “I want to put us within ten meters of his path, with about six seconds to react. That ought to catch his attention?”
“What if he’s not at the controls?” Carl asked.
That was a contingency she’d already planned for. Amy scowled, wondering if this was a test. “Then we fall in behind him, line up an easy shot, and knock out his engines.”
“Gonna have to put someone else in the turret if that’s the case,” Carl pointed out.
“Archie’s a failsafe. We can actuate the guns without any risk of them firing. Gives our threat a little more teeth without any ‘accidents.’”
Carl chuckled. “I’ve found that our turret accident rate fell through a wormhole after Mriy left.”
“You guys were a lot more militant. I blame her and Tanny.”
“Drugs and predatory instincts. In fairness, though, Mort did most of our killing.”
Amy’s eyes misted at the mention of the
wizard’s name. “Yeah, but him, I miss.”
Carl threw an arm around his girlfriend and pulled her close but only for a few seconds. “Hey, I miss him too. Better dad than Chuck ever was. But eyes on the prize. We’re ahead of this punk now. Don’t want to overshoot and have to wait for hours.”
With a few blinks and a sleeve across her eyes, Amy turned her attention back to the computers. With a few final adjustments, she maneuvered them into place and brought the Mobius to a full stop.
“Esper!” Amy shouted back to the common room. “Ease us back to 7.5.”
“Don’t number me,” Esper shouted back. “I’ll find us the other ship by his wake in the astral, not some goofy science yardstick I can’t even read.”
“She’s letting this Mort thing go to her head,” Carl muttered. “Wonder if this happens to every wizard over time.”
“Who else do you know who’s a wizard?” Amy asked.
“You,” Carl replied without missing a beat.
Amy just snorted. “That little precog trick of mine doesn’t make me a wizard any more than your split personality makes you one.”
Carl drew himself up haughtily. “I am a sane and mighty wizard. I come from a proud tradition.”
“There he is,” Amy exclaimed, pointing a finger through the glassteel window. The Harpoon Gale was headed right for them.
Carl’s finger dug into Amy’s shoulder. “You’re… sure you calculated this, right?”
“Yup,” Amy replied, hiding her nervous swallow as best she could. The computers on the Mobius were shit, but they weren’t stupid.
As the smuggler’s ship grew and grew, Carl’s hand continued to tighten until Amy shrugged out from under it. Proximity alarms lit the console like wildfire.
Just as Amy and Carl both ducked, the Harpoon Gale veered, clearing their ship by more than the scant ten meters Amy had allowed.
Carl dove for the comm panel. “Harpoon Gale, this is a stickup. Hand over the Tal Geru and the money, and you can keep your ship in one piece.” As soon as the transmission ended, Carl turned to Amy. “We tracking him with the guns?”