by C. Gockel
“Please help us find passage to Libertas. Will work for food and passage.” The last one rang with desperation and then the bridge was flooded with more, “We’ll work for food,” over and over again. A baby’s cry cracked through the comm, and a child’s voice. “I’m hungry, Papa.” James watched the nest of spider-like vessels converging in a massive cloud of shadows.
“Turn it off,” Noa said, her voice cold and level.
James turned off the radio and silence fell over the bridge.
Gunny whispered, “Damn. Ticks depend on places like Adam’s Station for supplies … but why are they congregating like that? And why aren’t they landing?”
Jaw tight, eyes focused straight ahead, Noa said, “They’re too small for the trip to Libertas, so they’re waiting here … but as to why they aren’t landing … I have a feeling we're about to find out.”
James found himself looking toward Luddeccea. The planet looked like a small blue star at this distance. “Luddeccea has cut off all off-world trade. Only Libertas is also self-sufficient in this system … barely,” he mused aloud. “They won’t be exporting goods. Does Adam’s Station even have enough food for them?”
Gunny exhaled loudly.
Noa reached to James through the ether and whispered, “My heart is breaking for them.”
James should have empathy, but all he felt was a need to further gauge the situation and an acute sense that he had too little data.
“Commander,” Ghost said over the ether, interrupting his thoughts. “There are no public calls for our apprehension.”
For a moment James felt a lightness in his chest, but then, in an acid voice, Noa said, “Maybe they put out more discreet inquiries as to our whereabouts.”
“I’ll see what I can find,” said Ghost.
James started plundering relevant historical data on food scarcity and violence, and discovered the French Revolution and the Syrian uprising of the early 21st century.
There was a soft swish behind him. James craned his head around his seat and saw Eliza and 6T9 at the bottom of the circular stairwell that surrounded the lift platform. Leaning on her cane and the ‘bot, the old woman panted, “Noa … If we’re … docking … I’m negotiating the fees!”
“What?” said Noa, sounding startled but not angry. And then she blinked. “Do you think you're in shape to haggle?”
Indeed, Eliza was wavering as she climbed the stairs, even with 6T9’s arm and her cane to prop her up. Reaching the top, she thumped her cane beside Noa’s seat. “I’ll be fine just as soon as I … catch my breath. And you aren’t a good negotiator … dear.”
Noa raised an eyebrow. “I am a good negotiator!”
Across the ether came a sort of hiccup as Ghost’s consciousness blinked in and out.
“How much did you pay Ghost?” Eliza demanded, tone suddenly sharp.
Noa drew back, so James responded. “30,000 Galactic Credits.”
Thumping her chest, Eliza broke into a coughing fit.
“Eliza,” 6T9 said, his voice an eerie facsimile of worry. “Perhaps you do need rest—”
“I'm coughing because I'm indignant. That was far too much!” Eliza cried.
6T9 smiled, apparently accepting her reasoning, and nodded. “Highway robbery,” the 'bot agreed and James's eyebrow rose in shock at the correct use of the idiom. His lip wanted badly to twitch ... it was probably good it couldn't, because Noa was frowning, and her brows were drawn together.
“I'm fit to haggle with anyone!” Eliza said.
Across the ether, Noa shouted through their cipher, “She’s practically falling over; she can’t negotiate.”
James raised an eyebrow. Eliza was prescient enough to keep money off-world. And James had thought Ghost’s fees had seemed exorbitant. James stood up from his seat. “Here, take my chair.”
Noa's eyes narrowed at him. James pretended not to notice.
As Eliza slid into his chair, 6T9 smoothed Eliza’s hair tenderly. Eliza briefly smiled at the ‘bot, but then turned to Noa and hissed, “It’s my money!”
Noa's shoulders sank. “You're right, it is. You can negotiate the docking fees.”
“Commander,” Ghost said across the ether, “I don’t see anything that looks like it might be an open contract sponsored by Luddeccea’s Guard.”
“That’s some comfort,” Noa sighed. Other sighs echoed over the shared line.
Ahead ticks dropped from the belt into their path and then departed like wisps of smoke. The Ark rounded a final asteroid decorated with neon signs and a planetoid came into view. Approximately half the size of Earth’s moon, it was slightly donut-shaped and encircled with an artificial ring that gave it the appearance of wearing a thick belt.
“It’s got some mighty big airlockers,” Noa said. “For a place this remote.”
“Airlockers?” James asked.
“Fancy name for berths,” said Gunny. “In the middle section, the belt that looks like it’s sucking in the planetoid’s gut.”
James squinted and noticed the “belt” had what appeared to be hangar doors along the outside. On the surface of the planetoid on either side of the belt, James saw a dome and hundreds of neon signs flashing all over the surface where it wasn’t writhing with ticks.
A flash of white and blue caught James’s eye. He lifted his gaze to see some older shuttles painted blue and white, flying in groups of threes around the planet.
“Local enforcers,” grunted Gunny.
“James, turn the comm back on,” Noa said.
James flicked the dial and an officious voice filled the bridge. “Unidentified ship, you will not be allowed to dock unless you have your own rations. Repeat, unidentified ship, you will not be able to dock unless you have your own rations. Payment for any services rendered will be in rations …” the message began to repeat.
“Well, now, we know why the ticks aren’t docking,” James said. They didn’t have the docking fee—food.
“Well, at least we don’t have to worry about the old woman’s negotiating skills,” Ghost grumbled.
“I’m still doing the negotiating!” Eliza said.
James glanced at Noa. Her eyes were riveted on the scene unfolding in the dome. “The ticks are well-behaved around the enforcers,” Noa murmured. “As these things go, this should be safe enough.”
James’s skin felt too cool, and his vision began to tunnel. Watching the ticks crawl over the planetoid and the husks of older ships, he had a bad feeling, like wading slowly into icy water. To no one in particular he said aloud and across the ether, “Hungry people are never safe.”
There was an uncomfortable pause.
He heard Gunny take a deep breath and Eliza gulp. But Noa grinned and said aloud and across the ether, “Well, gee, James, I guess you would know!” Gunny chuckled, Eliza giggled, the ether crackled laughter, and Ghost even kidded, “He stole my peanut butter!” James would have laughed too if he could have. He felt as though his neural net had been rebooted.
Looking around the bridge, 6T9 smiled, nodded sagaciously, and exclaimed, “Don't count your bedbugs before they hatch.”
The bridge went completely silent.
* * *
Noa stood beside a pallet loaded with S-rations just inside one of the Ark’s air locks. It was half of their payment, the other half was in Luddeccean credits … but these had seemed more important to the flight control who had directed them to land. Calorie dense, about the size of Noa’s palm, the hermetically sealed bars kept for decades, and each one represented a day’s rations for an active man. She shifted on her feet. Her mouth tasted like the stim gum she'd spit out minutes before. Without the time bands, the journey to Adam's Station had been at 21st century speeds and taken over ten hours, and they'd had the encounter with the tick before that ... Her mind jumped to her chronometer app, but before it told her how far she should be into her sleep cycle she ruthlessly shut it down.
Shaking her head, she looked over at James standing on the opposi
te side of the pallet. He had a ration open in his hand and he was eating it like a candy bar, claiming it as his “second breakfast.” Maybe an S-ration was enough for a normal man.
Noa cocked her head, amazed that he was actually biting through the tough material. Normally, S-rations were soaked in liquid first. Without softening, they had the texture of shoe leather. Well, he did have an augmented jaw—one that was broken and couldn’t smile or frown. It was odd that it didn’t seem to be malfunctioning when it came to eating.
Holding up the bar, James licked his lips. “What? You said that we have more than enough.”
Before Noa could respond, Eliza and 6T9 stepped into the airlock from the ship side. The old woman poked James with her cane. “You do not mention we have plenty! Do you know how hard I haggled to get them to take no more than a pallet load of these things?”
Before the system’s time gate had been shut down and Luddeccea had suspended intersystem traffic, a pallet of shoe-leather-hard S-rations wouldn’t have been worth much, even out here. Now they were worth more than even Libertas credits. The rations in front of Noa represented the docking fee, but the Ark had plenty more … If Noa’s tiny crew couldn’t open the time gate in the Kanakah Cloud, they could make it to System 7’s time gate with some to spare. In this new order, the members of the Ark were rich. She stood a little straighter.
Eliza spun to Noa. “And don’t look so confident when you talk to the station administrator! They’ll come up with extra fees if they sense you have more to give!”
“Look so confident?” said Noa.
“Don’t look like you know where your next meal is coming from!” Eliza snapped. Slouch your shoulders, stoop your back.”
Manuel stepped into the airlock carrying a tool case, and Gunny followed him. At a meter away Noa could smell stim gum on their breath.
Eliza tapped her chin and eyed the gunnery sergeant. “Nothing we can do to hide that beer gut.”
Looking morose, Gunny patted his impressive girth and sniffed sadly. “It’s shrinking.”
“It’s almost time,” said James. Noa gave him a tiny nod; her own chronometer was telling her that their scheduled disembarkation was close.
“Ghost, are you working on augmenting our ether hotspot so we’ll have transmission ability inside this rock?” Noa asked. The ‘rock’ had its own ethernet hotspots—but Noa didn’t want her team to use it. Besides the risk that it wasn’t secure and they could all get headaches, their hosts could turn off their access at the worst possible moment.
There was no response. “Ghost?” He was supposed to be in engineering. Noa looked for him on the ship’s locator and blinked. She turned around just in time to see the lift open down the hall through the inner airlock. Ghost came jogging forward, a satchel clutched in one hand. “Commander,” he gasped. “I thought, well, these rocks are hard on normal signals.” He dropped the satchel and it squeaked. Ghost jumped, the satchel burst open, and Carl Sagan hopped out. “What are you doing in there?” Ghost said as the werfle darted between Noa’s legs.
“Never mind,” Noa said, “What have you got us?”
Ghost pulled out what Noa first thought were a few finger-sized, regularly-shaped oval rocks. He handed her one. It was warm and covered in what appeared to be lumpy gray paint.
Ghost cleared his throat. “Touch up paint from the Ark’s storage area. Very old, that’s why it’s bubbly, but I think it looks more realistic—like a rock.”
“What are these?” asked Manuel.
Ghost coughed, and his cheeks flushed. “Well, the Ark doesn’t have ethernet hotspots—not really—but this ship has relay stations that the original Luddecceans used for their old archaic comm devices. I re-rigged them for ethernet. I put a bit of bonding putty on these, and painted them to be less conspicuous.” His brows furrowed. “I don’t think I’ll be able to optimize my Luddy-rigged ether hotspots on the Ark to keep you in range.” His face turned red. “And I don’t want to have to debug anyone foolish enough to plug into this Station’s network! It's not secure and crawling with bugs!”
Noa turned the ovoid device around in her hand. Even at fairly close distance it would pass as rubble. “Well done, Ghost,” she said, impressed and touched by his initiative more than she’d like to admit.
Ghost waved a hand. “It was nothing.”
Noa raised an eyebrow. Odd for him to be modest.
Outside the hull came a loud thunk, and over the ethernet a voice said, “Sato and crew, please open your airlock.”
Ghost backed toward the hallway, eyes wide and on the outer door.
“Keep us informed of anything you hear over their public boards,” Noa said.
Ghost didn’t meet her gaze. His Adam’s apple bobbed. “Believe me, Commander, I’ll look into the public ones and more.” His lower lip trembled. “I don’t want to get stuck here.”
That fear was why she didn’t trust him. Noa gave him a tight smile.
Another thunk sounded on the hull, and the voice in the ether virtually shouted, “A failure to open your airlock will result in forced entry.”
“It’s time, Commander,” said Manuel.
“6T9, take Eliza behind the airlock door,” Noa ordered. Ghost was already nearly at the lift. 6T9 swung Eliza into his arms, and she cooed, “My knight in shining armor.”
The 'bot exclaimed happily, “I have that app! And a caveman app, and a roman glad—” Noa closed the inner airlock as soon as they were out of the cramped space. Ignoring the looks on Gunny and Manuel's faces that clearly said, “We have heard too much,” she said to James, “They’ll probably want to check our cargo to make sure our docking fee is in order. Sometimes the inspectors are a little cranky.”
She waved at Gunny and he pressed the buttons that opened the outer seals.
There was the whir of mechanicals, a whoosh, and Noa was staring down the barrels of six rifles held by men in heavy armor. One of the rifles jerked and its owner screamed, “Hands above your heads!”
Chapter Five
The five armed men stormed into the airlock, rifles raised.
James had the sensation of being out of his body, or out of his mind. His eyes took in the invaders’ mismatched armor, the odd assortment of weapons, and their poor form. His apps calculated the feasibility of lifting the rifle of the nearest, driving the stock into the man’s face, pushing up the CO2 converting mask, and then bludgeoning him one more time before dropping behind the S-rations and firing at the others …
Noa’s voice cut off this chain of thought. “Everyone, you heard them, hands up!”
Gunny and Manuel complied. After a second’s hesitation, during which James marveled at how unlike his old self those mental plans had been, he lifted his hands, too, and his gaze slid to Noa.
Her eyes were locked on the man with a stun rifle closest to her. The end of the weapon was visibly shaking, and less than two hand spans from her face. Carl Sagan was hissing at her feet. James felt heat rushing under his skin. Stunners worked by very briefly overloading the nervous system. A blast directly to the head at such close range was fatal in approximately 21.2% of incidents. James’s vision went black, his hands made fists above his head, and he felt like he was standing on the edge of a cliff. He stepped sideways toward Noa and the man confronting her.
“What are you doing!” shouted one of the invaders.
James barked into the blackness. “Lower your weapon!”
There was a click. The blackness receded, and suddenly Noa’s guard had his weapon pointed at James’s head instead. “Think you’re tough?” he shouted.
“Easy!” the woman said. “You had it pointed at her head, Deek.”
“Now it’s pointed at your head, tough guy! Do you feel better?” Deek shouted.
James’s jaw shifted. He eyed the trembling muzzle, remembered the surge he’d felt when he’d been stunned before, and had the oddest desire to lick his lips.
His gaze slid to Noa, and he found her dark brown eyes already o
n him, her lips slightly parted. She gave him the tiniest of nods. A sixth man stepped into the airlock, and Noa’s eyes snapped to a handheld scanning device the new man was carrying. It had no visible controls or gauges on its smooth surface, so it must be ethernet-linked. Whatever the scanner was, Noa was clearly more afraid of it than of being shot. James suddenly wanted to know very much what the man was scanning.
James’s left hand began to tremble. With the time gate’s disablement, the local computer that supplied Adam’s Station’s ether was probably vulnerable. The Ark’s computer could find the scanner’s address, and then, given enough time, could probably decipher its access codes, and Ghost might be able to change its read-outs … with time.
They needed the information now.
James had a sensation, like something snapping at the back of his mind. A bright light flashed behind his eyes, static roared in his ears, and then the white light became red and took on form. He was seeing the pixelated silhouettes of humans flashing in his visual cortex: four people holding their hands above their heads, a werfle at their feet, while five stood with rifles raised. The man changed the direction of the scanner and James saw a fainter image of a small child and a woman hunched over, holding his hand. The person closest to him shouted, “Freeze.”
James’s head ticked. He was distantly aware of Noa’s eyes flashing in his direction. He was somehow seeing what the man accessing the scanner was seeing. That was impossible … the man changed the direction of the scanner again, and James saw a rat running in the walls, and then he heard the man say, “I think this ship looks nearly empty … but it could be shielded. I wouldn’t board just yet.”
James shivered. He had not heard with his ears; he had heard it with his mind through the man’s ether access. “Get out of there,” he heard another voice say over the channel. “Let’s consult with Adam … think he wants to keep the boat in one piece.”
Noa cleared her throat. “Do you want to inspect our payment?”
The guard nearest Gunny said in a woman’s voice, “Yeah, yeah, we need to do that.”