by Jake Elwood
He found the outline of a trap door and a fat padlock with a thumbprint reader.
Not good.
For the thousandth time he asked himself why he was taking such risks and enduring such pain for the sake of a suitcase full of metal bars. The ship was no longer at risk, after all. Sure, there was his good name to consider, but was it worth dying for?
The thought of giving money to gangsters galled him, and there was no reason to think they would be satisfied with the suitcase. Chan was a witness, and an annoyance. They would kill him anyway.
Ultimately, though, these were rationalizations, not reasons. Chan was clinging to a ladder in quiet agony because of stubborn, stupid pride. This band of criminals had beaten him up and harassed him, and he wasn't going to let them win.
There in the darkness, wondering if he would ever see light again, wondering if pain would fill the final moments of his life, his reasons for resistance seemed abstract to the point of absurdity. Pain was real. A laser beam cutting into him from below would be real. At that moment, if he could have saved himself by dropping the suitcase, he would have.
At least, he thought so. A perverse voice in the back of his mind still insisted that he should resist until his final breath.
"Why are you doing this?" he muttered. He didn't realize he'd spoken aloud until a voice in the darkness responded.
"You took my money," the man said, sounding puzzled that Chan would even ask. "You can't just let people take things. They only take more and more. It never stops."
Footsteps rustled in the darkness. It sounded like the man was coming closer.
"We need Garth," the man continued. "We had this whole plan worked out. We need to know if he talked to anyone. And we need you, too."
"Why?" The word was out before Chan could stop himself. It didn't really matter, he supposed. He couldn't stay hidden for long.
"You two have been screwing with us," the man said, sounding eminently reasonable. "You can't let people screw with you."
I'm going to die. Chan let the idea sink in. I'm going to die here in the darkness, clinging to this stupid suitcase. Because I didn't want to let someone take it away from me. Because I couldn't let go of it.
Metal clanked against metal directly beneath him. It was, he realized, the barrel of a gun bumping the ladder. His mind scrambled desperately for a solution and found nothing. Mother would tell me to embrace the situation. Accept it. Let go of fear, let go of the desire for things to be different. But I can't let go. The handle of the suitcase started to slide in his sweat-slick fingers, and he tightened his grip. I can't let go. I won't.
Beneath him, he heard the unmistakable sound of feet on metal rungs. The ladder vibrated as the man began to climb. Chan stared at the suitcase wedged against his leg, the brutally heavy container that had brought so much suffering into his life. He listened to the man beneath him take another step, and then he shifted his weight to the side, straightened his leg, and uncurled his cramping fingers.
And let go.
The scrape of metal against fabric as the suitcase slid from his leg almost blended with the sound of impact. The man did not cry out. He just fell, and Chan heard the distinct sounds of a body hitting the floor, and the suitcase hitting flesh once again.
Climbing down was surprisingly difficult. His aching hands didn't want to grip the ladder. At last he reached the floor, stumbling a bit when he stepped on the man's legs. Chan fumbled around in the dark until he found the man's gun. He pocketed it, then heaved the suitcase upright and dragged it along the floor beside him, heading back toward the light.
Behind him there was only silence.
Joss stood in darkness, her back against a metal wall, her chest pressed against a smooth metal cylinder that extended from the floor into the shadows high above. Her eyes had adjusted to the darkness, but there was nothing to see but the side of another cylinder a couple of meters away. Her ears strained into the darkness, trying to hear over the urgent beating of her own heart.
Cautious footsteps scuffed against the metal floor, the sound directionless in her cramped corner. Men murmured to each other, their voices indistinct. Then a man spoke, his tone conversational. "We know you're in here. Come on out, or things only get worse."
Silence.
"Really, we just need to talk to you about the location of a certain suitcase. We don't need a murder rap hanging over our heads. Come on out, we'll have a nice, civilized chat, and you can get on with your day."
A few more seconds passed in silence. Then a second man gave a derisive snort, and the first man said, "Well, it was worth a shot. They might've gone for it."
After that, Joss heard the sounds of slow, methodical searching. There seemed to be two men, one at each end of the long room, and they were working their way toward the center.
There was nothing to do but cower in silence.
Every second felt like an hour as she stood there, listening to faint scuffs and shuffling sounds, trying to guess what it all meant. Then a foot thumped against metal and she felt the tiniest hint of a vibration through her cheek where it was pressed against the cylinder.
One of the searchers had reached her.
She heard his steps as he moved around the cylinder, and she gathered herself to leap at him in a hopeless attack. And then Geoff's voice spoke in the darkness. "If you go easy on me, I'll tell you where the other one went."
The man froze. Then his feet slid across metal as he turned. "I'm listening."
Careful footsteps. That would be Geoff, stepping out of his hiding place. "There's a little nook by the top of the stairs. She stayed there until you guys went past, and then she snuck down the stairs."
"Bull," said the man closest to Joss. "Since when do you stick your neck out for someone else?" He sounded a few steps farther away.
"She has a small laser pistol," said Geoff, sounding rueful. "I decided it was prudent to do things her way."
There was a short, sharp rustle of fabric against flesh, the kind of sound you get when someone makes a violent motion. Then came the unmistakable sound of something hard striking flesh, and Geoff cried out. Joss gasped, the sound drowned out by a moan from Geoff. She pushed a couple of fingers into her mouth and bit down, willing herself to stay silent as a flurry of blows thudded into flesh and bone just a few meters away. Geoff endured it with grunts and low cries of pain. Then, mercifully, he went silent.
For a moment all she heard was the two men, panting with exertion. Then one man said, "What now?"
"We need to question him properly. Let's get him to the ship. I saw a garbage bin downstairs. We'll load him into that."
Joss stood listening in horrified silence as they dragged Geoff away.
Chapter 7
Liz sat at the helm station on the bridge of the Stark Raven, watching Venus expand before her. The planet wasn't much to look at, just a big ball of monochrome cloud hanging there in space. She tapped the console in front of her and called Rhett.
There was no reply.
Liz frowned, puzzled. Rhett was the one member of the crew who was guaranteed to take every call, every time. He could juggle several phone calls at once, in fact. If he wasn't answering, there was no point in even trying the others.
"What have they gotten themselves into now?" she mumbled, and tapped a flashing icon on her console.
A smug mechanical voice addressed her over the bridge speakers. "Welcome to Montgolfier. Please follow the navigation beacons to Etienne Station."
"I don't want to go to Etienne Station," Liz said. "I want to go straight to Montgolfier."
"Has your ship been treated to withstand sulfuric acid?"
Liz stared at the speakers, nonplused. "I don't know."
"You'll have to dock with Etienne Station," the voice said. "There are regular shuttles to the city. Please follow the navigation beacons."
Liz sighed and gave in, wondering how long the whole process would take. She hoped the others weren't in any trouble.
&nb
sp; Rhett's day-to-day experience was not exactly the same thing as consciousness, and when waves of electricity washed through his body, the aftermath was not exactly the same thing as a coma. A great many circuit breakers tripped as the shock surged through him, protecting a thousand delicate systems and components. Not everything could be protected, of course. Not even close. But many, many circuits were shut down before they could be destroyed.
A fraction of himself remained. There was not enough for elaborate reasoning. The distinctive personality that had been developing slowly over the long months since he'd been abandoned on Saturn's moon Titan was gone, at least temporarily. The bit that remained had no idea what was recoverable. It did not even know that something had been lost.
It only knew of one switch, a tiny mechanical relay deep in his metal skull. The switch was set in the "off" position. No current could pass through it.
The tiny conscious part of Rhett drew power from a minuscule capacitor. That power couldn't last long. But there was danger in testing the open switch too soon. If whatever calamity had destroyed the rest of the electronic brain was still going on, closing the switch could result in the loss of the only part of Rhett that remained.
So it waited, dormant, only keeping track of the power reserve remaining in the tiny capacitor. There was no precise way to tell how much power remained. When the capacitor reached a point where the drop in charge was detectable, the functioning shred of Rhett's mind took a chance and closed the switch.
No waves of electricity poured in. The disaster was over for the moment. And the available memory and computing power were doubled. There was another capacitor designed to feed this next section of Rhett's brain. This capacitor had failed, which was unfortunate but not insurmountable. No longer concerned with self-protection, the sliver of almost-consciousness set about looking for more switches.
There were three more switches visible from its new, expanded perspective, and it promptly closed all three. One new segment was fried, the switch beyond it melted, permanently open but too late to save the delicate circuits. The next two segments were intact, effectively doubling Rhett's brain power. There was even a tiny capacitor which had kept its charge.
Random bits of data came to Rhett's emerging mind. He stored his memory in a chaotic jumble, a mesh of redundant, related pieces of information all mixed together in a digital goulash. It was impossible to map or catalog, but it allowed him to make unlikely associations, to see connections his programmers could never have anticipated, and to make almost-intuitive leaps.
He had access to only a tiny fraction of those memories, but a few stray facts became accessible. He knew his own serial number. He knew what a Fibonacci sequence was. He knew that he had eight fingers, two thumbs, and no toes, and that he was a crewman on the Stark Raven.
There was no context for any of these pieces of information. Rhett ignored them and set about closing more switches. It took time to integrate the circuits that he exposed with each new switch, but as the accessible portion of his mind expanded, he was able to integrate faster and faster. He closed switches at a faster rate, and his consciousness grew.
Huge areas remained blank. Many had been fried by the current. Other areas were simply inaccessible, surrounded by damage. There was no way to tell how much remained.
He reached a block of mechanically-stored memory, and data came flooding in. He knew his name, his technical specifications, and the basic details of his history. It was too much to hold in the ravaged remains of his active memory, so he hung onto his technical specifications and his name, and he forgot the rest. It would still be there when he was ready.
He gained the ability to deduce and to learn, and it radically improved his ability to recover himself. Switch after switch clicked shut, and a significant portion of his mind was his again.
Then came the exploration of his body. Once again he found a mixed jumble of damaged areas and areas protected by open switches. He closed switches methodically, and gathered information about his state.
There were processors in his limbs and in several places around his torso, in effect mini brains to more efficiently run the various parts of his body. Every one of these processors had taken damage, losing its basic programming completely. There were copies of the basic programming in mechanical storage, and Rhett restored the processors one by one.
He started to take in visual information. There were cameras on his ankles and wrists, another in the small of his back. He was able to access about half of them, and learned that he was folded up in a dark, confined space.
His eyes, the cameras installed on the front of his face, were far more sophisticated. Each eye had its own processor, and restoring the processors was a long, laborious process. Eventually, though, he finished, and his eyes activated.
Rhett was awake.
"I can't say I'm pleased to see you again, Mr. Chan."
Chan sat in an all-too-familiar guest chair and stared across the cluttered desk at Captain Elba. He knew he was in trouble, a great deal of it, but he was so happy to be alive that it was hard to be properly concerned.
"When you were last here," Elba continued, "I gave you the opportunity to be honest with me."
"I have told you no lies."
Elba favored Chan with a cold, predatory smile. "Then perhaps you would like to explain what you were doing coming out of a service corridor with a small fortune in iridium, in a suitcase stained with the blood of a dead local criminal?"
"Sure," said Chan. "The suitcase belongs to Inner Planet Express. Well, technically it belongs to their client. They hired my crew and me to deliver it. It was stolen from us, and we managed to recover it. The dead man tried to steal it from me. He chased me into the service corridor, I climbed a ladder, the suitcase slipped from my hand, and he died."
Elba stared at Chan for a time. "That's it?" he said at last. "That's your explanation?"
"We reported the theft on Aphrodite Station," Chan said.
Elba stared at him. Chan, nothing if not patient, stared back.
"When I last spoke to you," Elba said at last, "you were in the company of a notorious local hustler named Mr. Charles. At the time, I was dismayed to see you in such disreputable company. Now I have learned that he was perhaps the most upstanding person brought before me that day."
He seemed to expect a response, so Chan raised his eyebrows in polite inquiry.
"You keep the most fascinating company, Captain Chan." Elba consulted a screen mounted on his desk. "George Montblanc is the subject of no fewer than fourteen complaints or ongoing investigations. The next time we have Mr. Montblanc in custody we won't be releasing him for a very long time."
Geoff's name was George Montblanc? Chan said, "I'm not surprised."
Elba raised his eyebrows. "What are you doing in the company of such a man?"
Chan sighed. "Remember the part where I said the iridium was stolen from me? Well, he's the one who stole it."
Elba sighed as well. "And the young woman? Jocelyn? What is her last name, by the way? I have four different names on record."
"I wish I knew."
The cop shook his head. "She seems to be a confidence artist nearly as accomplished as Mr. Montblanc. Why do you have such a person on your crew?"
"I'm trying to reform her."
Elba glared. "You would do well not to toy with me, Captain." When Chan didn't respond he added, "We'll release you when you're ready to cooperate."
A cop led Chan back to his cell and locked him in. Chan sat on his bunk, stared at the opposite wall, and heaved a sigh. It was going to be a long day.
"Sign here. Press your thumb here."
Chan signed, pressed his thumb, then watched as the desk sergeant signed and added a thumb print as well. The sergeant was acting as a witness.
"Great," said the young woman from Inner Planet Express. "That's all I need. Thank you very much for returning the cargo. We'll transfer the balance of your fee to your account immediately." They were chargi
ng a penalty for late delivery, but at least they were still paying.
She gestured to a little rolling robot beside her. The robot approached the iridium, now packed into a pair of plastic cases. Mechanical arms lifted the cases effortlessly onto the robot's carrying tray, then folded themselves protectively over the cargo. The woman left the police station, the robot whirring along at her heels.
"Can I go?" Chan said wearily.
The desk sergeant consulted a console. "Captain says you're to leave Montgolfier and never return. The next shuttle is in four hours. You're subject to arrest, starting two minutes after it leaves."
"Great." Chan trudged out of the police station. He was reaching for his phone when he saw Liz and Rhett standing in the corridor outside. Liz smiled when she saw him, but he could see tension in the lines around her mouth. She came toward him, and Rhett followed, limping. Chan blinked, startled. The robot's left foot dragged with every step. His right shoulder seemed to sag a bit, too.
"Don't look at me," Liz said. "He was like that when I found him."
"Found him?"
"He was at the shuttle bay waiting for me. His phone circuits are fried." She scowled. "He says someone worked him over with Tasers."
Chan shook his head. "It seems like such a nice place," he said. "But damn, it's a rough town."
"So what's the next step?" she asked. "Go track down the iridium?"
"Already taken care of."
"Oh." She smiled. "Good." Liz looked around. "Where's Joss? She run off with Geoff?"
"Liz—"
"I know, I know." She held up her hands. "She's a loyal, dependable member of the crew. I even agree with you, believe it or not."
"Good." He took out his phone. "Let's see where she is."
They met up at the door to Lisa's apartment. Lisa let them in and listened in shocked silence as they took turns telling her their stories. By the time they finished she was white-faced and wide-eyed.