“Yer late, Mick.” Scorzani, the Boss’s right-hand man, shook his head as Diarmuid stumbled into the control room overlooking the second and larger of the two docking bays.
“Sorry,” Diarmuid said, mentally adding Captain Obvious as he resisted rolling his eyes heavenward. “So, you’ve got a weight problem?”
“Scuzzi?”
“The ship—that beauty in there. The weights were off from her cargo list?” Jaysus but he was crapping on all cylinders today.
“That’s what the moron Carlito reported, but the crew checks out and they says they got nothing to do with anything, of course.” Scorzani shrugged bull-like shoulders.
Diarmuid started checking the data. His little ‘extras’ like coffee and licorice and the silk panties for Donovan’s sextomatons were all there and listed, their weights accounted for in the ship manifests. Each ship coming into the Arcadia system had to register cargo, crew, and exact weight minus the expected fuel burn for the incoming journey before one of the two techs, Diarmuid being one, would program in the coordinates.
The idiot Carlito wasn’t wrong, though: this ship’s weight was off by twenty-one point three six kilos.
“Scanned it for bugs, I assume?” he asked.
Scorzani pinched the bridge of his nose as though he had a headache and nodded. “Find the stinking issue. The ambrosia shipment’s all processed and ready to go. Boss wants this done and off.”
“Done and done, boss.” Diarmuid rubbed sweating palms onto his trousers and let out a slow breath. What weighed twenty-one bloody kilos? A middling-size dog? Maybe one of the crew went on one hell of a diet?
“Good, Mick. I’m putting you in charge of this and I’ll be reporting that straight to the Boss.” Scorzani clapped him on the shoulder hard enough to knock him into the console, probably adding another bruise.
That’s how it was here in Purgatory, as the lower echelons on the ambrosia processing station liked to call it. If there was a buck to be passed, it got passed quicker than kissing disease. Diarmuid squeezed his sweating hands into fists and tried to shove away the feeling that, once again, the music had stopped, and he’d been left standing in the spotlight with his trou bunched round his ankles. There was nothing for it but to get to work and come up with some kind of explanation that didn’t get him retired as a shooting star in Arcadia’s atmosphere.
Asteroids. That would be what he’d tell the bosses, Diarmuid decided after inspecting the bloody ship, digging through the manifests, and then jumping right into the meat of the onboard computer’s code. Fooking asteroids.
The ship was one of the long, oblong star-runners and a real beauty—sleek and silvery, with excellent dynamics and engine to weight ratios—except for the hell of a dent some idiot had failed to notice in the aft hull. The records showed them stopping in the Beehive Cluster at one of the Family’s twenty-two ansible arrays and then taking what they recorded as “minor” damage from an unforeseen asteroid shower around the planet they’d decided to orbit.
Bits of heavy iron and nickel-infused space rock had welded itself right into the hull underneath the bulbous lower cargo bays, where any bloke who wasn’t blind with his hands missing could have found it on a routine inspection once the bloody thing got into dock. Not that it accounted for all twenty-one point three six kilos, though—Diarmuid had no fooking clue how the rest of that weight got in there, but his back was killing him and he still had multiple little “gifts” and sundries to deliver. This buck could now be safely jettisoned into space.
He compiled a report and forwarded it on up to Scorzani. Job complete. Except …
There were a few bits of junk code: little remnants that sometimes were stored where they shouldn’t be so that when the main data was deleted, sections lived on … much like finding some broad’s hair in your bed or perfume lingering on your pillow long after she’d taken all your money and run off with a man whose name people could actually pronounce.
Diarmuid popped his right shoulder and stared at the screen. The crew. This data seemed to say that something had changed with the crew, but the rest had been scrubbed out by a program that knew what it was up to. He brought up the manifest again. Six of the blokes he recognized from prior runs out to pick up shipments. Two others checked out with cross data from the last back-up they had of the general Family databases.
But the new sucker—a big, blocky-looking fellow who was supposedly a new station doctor, going by the name of Moretti. Diarmuid stared at the video replay of Dr. Moretti offloading from the ship and shook his head. If that man was a doctor, he’d slap a bonnet on himself and let the boys call him Mary Mags.
To top that off, the file was stamped “voluntary”. If this bastard was a doctor, he was an idiot one. No one but the top few, those connected by blood, came “voluntary” to Purgatory.
Diarmuid sighed and punched the off button on the screen. He had people to see and places to avoid. Flagging this poor rat and then going through the mess of a DNA test and other nonsense would be a pain up the arse. With his luck lately, the bloke would be legit—and then he’d have another scary-fooking bloke looking for payback on his arse.
’Sides, if Diarmuid’s luck were really turning for the besty, that nineteen-odd kilos he couldn’t account for even with the asteroids would turn out to be a cleverly hidden bomb, and Dr. Moretti would blow this rock wide open.
“Legging it from the worst, hoping for the best,” Diarmuid said to himself, and he whistled the whole way back down to his quarters.
He’d just pulled on his favorite paisley smoking jacket and poured a tumbler of neat scotch—the real stuff, peaty taste and everything—when his door chimed and the friendly computer voice (choice number five on the standard list) informed him that a guest was waiting in the foyer.
“The foyer” was an overly grand name for the space between the corridor door and the inner entrance, but Diarmuid tried to cling to what semblance of normalcy he could and he’d programmed the computer to refer to such things by their proper names. The damn program still called him Mick, though.
He flipped to the camera and saw LC-920 impatiently staring up into the viewer with her big doe eyes. Curious shite, this. The sextomatons never came to see him directly. Diarmuid was indentured. Sure, he was supposedly the top technician, but fooked if the sexbots cared about that. Probably figured he’d reprogram them to do something kinky. LC-920, or Elsie as she demanded to be called, was the only one who gave him the time, much less a spot of conversation. She was also the only one with a truly unique personality.
“Evening, Elsie.” Diarmuid mustered up a smile as she sashayed into his one-room apartment. Apartment? Compartment, more like.
“You’re awful brooksy for a canceled stamp, Mick,” she said, leaning in to kiss him on the cheek before dancing by and hopping up onto the kitchenette counter. The beaded fringe on her dress shivered and tinkled as she moved.
Diarmuid had no clue what she’d just said … but her blood-red lips were smiling, so he assumed it was something nice and inclined his head politely. Some history buff, and there were a surprising number of those in the Family, had decided that programming this particular bot with an archaic vocabulary would make for good craic. The bastard was half-right. Elsie had a bucketful of personality, but no one ever understood half of what spilled out from between her lips.
Diarmuid started, politely, to ask her what she wanted, but she brought a manicured finger to her mouth and then reached into her ample cleavage and drew out a small black box with a switch on it. She flipped it, and a chill crept up Diarmuid’s spine as the room filled with almost imperceptible static.
A jammer. Shite.
He wracked his brain for what he might have said or done in his last encounter with her. Elsie appeared weak and harmless, but she took insults very personally and many a poor square had ended up accidently going down a maintenance shaft face first. Rule one of living on Purgatory: never underestimate Elsie.
“Come’ere,
Mickie,” she purred, crooking a finger at him.
He went with the reluctance of a moth mistaking a heat lamp for the moon, wondering if he was about to experience first-hand one of Elsie’s “accidents”.
“You’re a flukey embalmer, Mick, but word is you always get things done.” Her fingers trailed down and loosed the sash of his jacket, slipping inside to tangle in the light dusting of copper hairs on his lower belly.
He swallowed hard and tried to parse what she’d said. “You need something?” he asked. It was, after all, what his unofficial job had become, so it seemed a safe-ish guess.
“I do, Mick, I really do.” Her hand slid down and undid his belt, then dived deeper. Sweat started trickling in an itchy line behind his ears and into his collar. “I want,” she said, leaning forward so her lips were right beside his ear, “to get off this fucking rock.”
Shite on a stick. His granpappy, Jaysus rest him, had taught Diarmuid to never argue with or refuse a woman whose hand was wrapped around his balls. He wasn’t sure the old man had meant that literally, but seeing as Elsie’s hand was currently stroking him somewhere around his ’barse, he really didn’t want to have to tell her no.
And yet, she’d asked him for the one thing he probably couldn’t procure: a way out of hell.
He pulled gently on her wrist, mentally kicking himself. Hopefully she’d kill him quickly and not leave him to spend the rest of his days drooling in a chair, handing out napkins in the men’s room at Donovan’s like the last sad sack who’d pissed her off.
“I can’t do that, Elsie. I’m sorry, my lovely, but if I could get anyone off this rock, I’d go myself.”
Her eyes narrowed, and Diarmuid started trying to remember the words for the Last Rites. “But you’ll escape. The sod busters get you eventually. I don’t die. I just go right on petting these potatoes and rug hoppers until some wurp flips my switch or re-stitches me. I gotta scram before then, Mickie—I just have to.”
He stood still, holding onto her hand, feeling the steel beneath the soft, fake skin and suddenly an image of the stone-faced doctor invaded his mind. The probable phony. He couldn’t be in Purgatory without a reason, and if he were an infiltrator from a competitor … well, he’d have an escape plan, now, wouldn’t he? Facing off against an unknown, cold-eyed bastard suddenly looked a lot better than trying to tell Elsie no again.
His heart thudding a million light-years a second, Diarmuid licked his lip and decided he wanted to live a little longer.
“All right, love,” he said, bringing her fingers to his mouth in a gentle kiss that had his neglected balls lodging complaints. “Lend me that jammer there, and I’ll see what I can do.”
“No.” She smiled. “I’m going along.”
Diarmuid found himself shifting nervously from foot to foot inside the doctor’s foyer, staring up into the camera. Elsie stood silent and vacuous beside him. She’d sworn on pain of reprogramming that she’d let him do all the talking.
“I’m Diarmuid O’Malley, chief tech. I need to come in and calibrate your monitor.” Bloody lame excuse, but it worked most of the time on the non-techs. He wasn’t sure how to explain Elsie, so he just left her out. Keeping things simple was usually the best plan—if there even was a plan.
There was silence for long enough that he started to wonder if the bloke would just ignore them. The station computer that Diarmuid had hacked into said that Moretti was inside his quarters, but that didn’t mean he’d answer his door—especially if he happened to be some sort of foreign agent.
He didn’t realized how much tension he’d been holding in until the inner doors slide apart and his legs turned to deck rubber. Cautiously, Diarmuid stepped inside an apartment that was nearly identical to his own, except for missing any and all personal features.
“Monitor works fine,” Moretti said. He’d been so still that Diarmuid hadn’t immediately seen him, and he gave a little start as the big man peeled away from the wall near the kitchenette.
Afraid he’d lose his nerve and leg it before getting what needed saying said, Diarmuid pulled out the jammer, strode over to the counter, and turned the thing on. Elsie’s dress shimmered around her as she followed him.
“We come in peace,” Elsie said with a wink after giving Moretti the once-over.
Diarmuid squeezed her arm and glared, trying to remind her with his eyes that she’d promised to shut her gob.
Moretti cracked his knuckles and tipped his head to one side, one pale eyebrow raised and his smoke-grey eyes as hard and friendly as ice cubes. At least his hands looked large enough to crack Diarmuid’s neck in one quick blow—if this whole thing went arseways, his death might be even quicker than what grand old Elsie could deliver. If he really bollixed this up, maybe they’d both have a go together.
“Hear us out before you start cracking anything else,” Diarmuid began, shuffling so that the counter was between him and the giant. “I know you aren’t Moretti. If you’re really a doctor, I’ll … well, ’tisn’t important what I’d do. My guess is you are the first honest-to-Jaysus infiltrator one of the others has managed to get into this rock. And hat’s off to you, mate. Truly. Bold job. I’d guess Siberian Syndicate, eh?” A muscle twitched in the man’s jaw, but he said nothing. “Not going to tell me? That’s fine, that’s right fine. But see, if I were a betting man—and I used to be, that and the light-skirts got me here—I’d bet that you are after the location of this place.”
When he stopped to suck in a breath, the Siberian spoke, glancing back and forth between the two of them.
“You know what location of Ambrosia planet is worth?”
“Well, yes, mate. I do. And there are only five people inside this whole rock who know where it is. That’s why ships have to stop at the arrays, so we can program the location into the drives and then scrub them when they get here, and why we make everyone jump away blind and undergo another scrub at the next array.” Diarmuid licked his lips. The Siberian had folded his arms and was listening, leaning slightly forward, his eyes calculating instead of frozen. Time for the pitch.
“I’m one of the five. The location codes are in my head. Literally. And I’ll give them to whomever you work for—on the condition that I and my friend blow off this rock, and are set with enough to see out our days somewhere comfortable and far fooking away from any Family.”
“Tell me.” The Siberian bared his teeth, even and white and almost sharp-looking, like a predator’s.
“Not born yesterday, mate. Get us outta here first. You’ve got an escape plan, I assume?”
The Siberian laughed, the sound as heavy and grating as ungreased ball bearings rubbing together. “I show you plan.” He opened his mouth and leaned in close enough that Diarmuid could almost taste the man’s dinner, onion and protein compote. At the back of his mouth one of his molars was discolored, incongruous with the perfect teeth around it.
“Is cyanide. In my ear is recorder. Scans not find it because it is not activated until I give code word. I die when I have enough information and body goes out airlock. After body temperature drop to freezing or if hit atmosphere and burn, signal goes out and my people come.”
“Cor, what a wurp,” Elsie muttered from behind Diarmuid.
“Fooking Jaysus. That’s cold.” Diarmuid shook his head and slumped against the counter. The Siberian had likely planned to find out who had the code and then torture it out of them, killing himself afterward. Standard protocol was to jettison all bodies. Many ended up as corpsicles orbiting Purgatory; the rest were probably sucked down into Arcadia’s atmosphere to become another flash over the ocean planet.
“If you want asylum, I can offer. But I cannot get us off this place. Maybe you have weapon? We could take that ship.”
“No, no weapons on Purgatory. Not that it would matter. There’s only two launch keys, and I mean physical keys that have to be turned for the doors to open and the launch magnets to activate. Those I don’t have access to.”
“Boxswiller. Ther
e’s a gun on the station. And it’s in the same spot as a key.” Elsie danced in a little circle, half-singing the words.
“What?” Diarmuid turned to her and then realized what she meant. “Ah. That pea-shooter above the Boss’s desk? That thing’s a relic. Does it even have ammunition?”
“It shoots vegetables?” The Siberian looked lost.
“No, potato, it shoots people. With lead or something.” Elsie gave him her most wicked grin, and Diarmuid knew the man truly was made of ice and stone when he didn’t even blink, much less blush.
“Can you get the key and the gun, Elsie?”
“I can fix it. Boss is a real cuddler who likes to take too much lap in that back room at Donovan’s nosebaggery. I get him drowned enough, I can take whatever I want.” She chewed the inside of her cheek, thinking. “You beggars will have to be ready, though, with our ride. My hijinks won’t go skulky forever.”
“Translation?” The Siberian looked at Diarmuid.
“She’s going to get the Boss drunk and take the key and the gun, and we’d better be ready to scram on the ship whenever she shows up,” Diarmuid said in a rush before Elsie could take offense at the Siberian not understanding her. It was her main peeve.
“Good. Let us make plan.” The Siberian smiled, and Diarmuid almost started to believe that they’d really be able to do this.
The adrenaline high of charging into certain doom thinking they could win had worn a bit threadbare by the wee hours of the next morning. Diarmuid stood in the console room of docking bay two, programming the cameras onto quick video loops as he tried not to think about the sounds of struggling and choking coming from behind him. The Siberian had the poor sod who’d drawn night duty in a headlock and was slowly squeezing the life right out of him.
“Eh, don’t kill him, all right? Just stuff him in that closet when he stops kicking. We’ll be out before he wakes up,” Diarmuid called over his shoulder.
“You let me kill the others,” the Siberian said, with just a hint of a whine in his flat voice.
Therefore I Am - Digital Science Fiction Anthology 2 Page 17