Counterweight

by A. G. Claymore

  After two years, Callum had decided it was reaching the tipping point. So many citizens – those who could afford the indulgence – were forming the coffee habit that it would now look odd if he continued to avoid it.

  He fought the grin as he took a first sniff. He knew part of his reasoning was nothing more than an attempt to justify his decision. He wanted coffee, dammit! Still, it made good sense in terms of blending in and so he took a tentative sip.

  It was harder than he thought to hold back the enraptured sigh as he formed what he hoped was a speculative expression. For all he knew, the security cameras were still looking for evidence of familiarity in first-time purchasers.

  “Can’t believe this is your first coffee,” Belfric mused as he took the seat across from him. He adopted the universal grin of an old hand watching an initiate. “What’s the verdict?”

  A shrug, more from pleasure than indifference, but effective all the same. “Not sure it’s worth the price.” He offered Belfric a look of disdain. “I suppose it’s one of those things you have to develop a taste for?”

  “Hah! Wait till you finish and see how you feel.” Belfric tilted his head forward slightly. “It has twice the caffeine of a floater…”

  “Really?” An appraising glance at the mug. “Might be worth the price after all.” He didn’t want to seem too reluctant about coffee. He had every intention of becoming a regular consumer again.

  “You hear about the fuss up near the tether station?” Bel’s light tone concealed the fact they were now discussing the death of one of his oldest friends.

  The actions of the Stoners had unsettled C’Al and his inner cadre. They’d decided not to conduct any more organized meetings and all communication would now be conducted in the open as much as possible.

  “Yeah, I even heard the shops falling but I didn’t think anything of it.” A safe enough statement. Shops fell all the time. He wouldn’t probe. He simply offered bland responses, leaving it up to Belfric to work in the details as he saw fit.

  “One of my cousins was up there,” Bel lied. “Works as a clerk for some hot-shot importer and he said one of the Stoners used a stun scatter on the crowd.”

  “What, just randomly?” A reasonable response and it indicated C’Al’s grasp of the important detail. The Stoners were trying to capture one of his people. They’d been right to increase their counter-surveillance measures.

  “Seems like they were after someone who’d just come out of the station.”

  “Hmmm…” C’Al took another sip. “Maybe they wanted to charge him rent for being in the station for too long?” He hoped his message was clear enough.

  Bel nodded, grinning. “Not wise to spend too much time in there, I suppose.”

  That was a relief. Callum didn’t much care for this verbal fencing but Belfric had understood the message. No watchers were to stay in the station long enough to attract attention. He could be trusted to get the new details out.

  He took another sip, this time nodding with approval as he set the mug down. “It does grow on you,” he admitted as grudgingly as he could manage. He looked up at Belfric. “You hear about the rash of free training?”

  Bel nodded. “Crazy, huh?” He shook his head. “Close to a dozen, all in the last couple of days. But the really wild thing is how fast the news is spreading about it.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  A nod. “It’s starting to draw crowds. The lucky kids going in for a pod session have to pass a gauntlet of gawkers.”

  This was better news than Callum had expected. He was hoping to get some buzz started but it sounded like the word was getting out faster than his wildest projections. For a population as starved of prospects as Chaco Benthic, the tiniest spark of hope could be enough to start a wildfire.

  “Long overdue, if you ask me.” He saw Bel’s nod. Message understood – accelerate the process by any means.

  “Whoever’s behind it is a fine fellow, as far as my log shows.” He stood and picked up his drink. “Well, I have a get-together with my wife’s family.” He nodded at C’Al and left.

  Callum took another sip.

  Family. Kids.

  None of it had seemed important when he was a young man on Earth, struggling against what he’d thought to be an evil administration. Oh, sure, the government had been up to a lot that he still didn’t approve of but they’d been telling the truth about the aliens.

  Most of the people who’d made up that government were long dead – killed in the plague that wiped out most of the planetary population. The Humans who survived were effectively a new species.

  He still wasn’t welcome among decent folk. Most of the original Alliance crews could remember, first hand, his role in nearly crippling the Human war effort. It wasn’t surprising that he had a closer connection to the aliens he was sent here to manipulate into revolt.

  Cal shoved the mug across the table. He looked down at the half-empty drink for a few seconds until, with a quiet sigh, he stood up and walked away.

  Rights of Salvage

  The Foxlight II, Chaco Benthic

  Rick woke to the sound of a loud humanoid voice. It took him several seconds to realize he was aboard the Foxlight II’s small shuttle and not in the jungles of 3428. It took even longer to sort out that the voice was speaking in Dheema, the official language of orbital control throughout the Republic.

  He had no trouble understanding it – the pod system on the Canal had implanted it along with his engineering knowledge – but it was confusing to wake up hearing a language other than your own.

  “Foxlight II, this is Orbital Control, Chaco Benthic. We’re reading heavy damage to your vessel. Do you require assistance?”

  Heavy damage was an accurate enough assessment. The bridge was unusable. The hull breaches were only half the problem. A third of the workstations had been smashed by enemy fire and Rick had been obliged to improvise.

  He’d realized the only places on the ship that still had atmosphere were the two shuttles. From there, it was a small leap of imagination to realize he could slave the bridge controls to one of the shuttles and operate the ship in relative comfort.

  He had launched the small craft and attached it to the underside of the mother ship’s nose, locking the ventral escape chambers of the vessels to provide easy access between the two. After a fifteen-hour marathon of wiring, he had a working control link and the Foxlight II jumped back into distortion with her jury-rigged bridge.

  And he’d found a hidden store of spicewood under the shuttle’s deck plating. Probably the last of the stolen wood from his home world. At least the raiders had left him with something.

  He shook the cobwebs out of his mind, scrambled into the pilot’s seat and activated the manual controls. “Orbital Control, Benthic – this is Foxlight II. We were hit by raiders two days ago. The captain and crew are dead; I’m the only survivor.” His Dheema was flawless, if a bit formal. “Request permission to dock.”

  “Permission to dock your shuttle at chinef 42.”

  Something felt wrong. Rick could see at least four dozen large ships – some larger than his – docked at the station. “Stand by, Orbital Control.” He muted his out-going link.

  He was a military officer – kind of – and he’d been trained in applicable legal matters. Republic law regarding rights of salvage was standard fare and even the crew of the Canal had the knowledge installed in their minds.

  He’d never needed to use it, however, and the specifics were a little hazy. Nonetheless, he knew an abandoned vessel was free for the taking, regardless of whether you were in Earth orbit or Republic space. If they could trick him into detaching the shuttle and docking, the ship would fall out of his control.

  So how much was this sieve worth in salvage? He gave her a professional appraisal as a ship’s engineer and realized she was in far better shape than she looked. The fusion, pitch and distortion drives were all in good working order and the bridge controls wouldn’t be hard to repair. Buy a few
new capacitors and repair the hull breaches and you had yourself a perfectly good ship.

  “Foxlight II, this is Orbital Control, Benthic. Confirm docking gate.”

  Rick ignored the intrusion. This was where the crew was headed, so there were probably relatives down on the planet. Under Republic law, if he put in at a world where others could claim ownership, it reduced his share by half.

  If he left the ship, all shares would revert to the planetary government. The family would get nothing and he’d be dirt poor on an alien world. Not a good option.

  The specifics of Republic salvage law were flooding back into focus now, including the accepted norms and customs of pressing a claim. It was amazing how effective pod training was in practical use. He unmuted his output channel.

  “Orbital Control, Benthic, this is Foxlight II. I formally request notification be provided to the vessel’s owner or next-of-kin. Please inform them that I will wait at holding coordinates until negotiations are concluded.” He sat back in the chair, knowing what the response would be, but not sure what it indicated.

  “Foxlight II, Orbital Control, Benthic. We’re going to send an inspector aboard before notifying the next-of-kin.”

  It felt like the controller was playing for time. Rick probed for a few seconds, bombarding the alien with unasked questions. It seemed the orbital tether was instrumental when it came to inserting orbital controllers into salvage situations as middle-men.

  The ride down was relatively cheap but the ride back up was hideously expensive. That fact alone tended to keep wary travelers from visiting but there were still plenty who fell into the trap.

  More to the point, the high price provided work for salvage brokers. The brokers lived on the counterweight, a massive former troopship repurposed as the spaceward end of the carbon nanotube tether. From the counterweight, elevators carried freight and passengers to the underwater city.

  The agents saved owners the high cost of travelling to the counterweight. For a small percentage, they provided the legally required face-to-face negotiation with salvagers.

  If the controller was forced to notify the next-of-kin, an agent would be hired and the controller would lose a lucrative chance. Rick grinned. The controller’s problem was the solution to Rick’s own dilemma. He couldn’t allow anyone aboard until the deal was struck but he couldn’t leave the ship to negotiate or she’d be declared abandoned. “Orbital Control, Benthic, Foxlight II. I need someone to act as my agent in this matter. Would you be willing to sell my share to the family’s broker?”

  He almost laughed at the controller’s rampant greed. He knew what was coming and already had his response ready.

  ‘It’s irregular,” the controller lied smoothly, “but I could do it for fifty percent.”

  Rick had already explored his idea by floating dozens of unasked questions for the controller. Five percent was the norm, though it varied. “I was thinking along the lines of ten,” Rick replied. “But it sounds like we’re too far apart on this. I’ll just break contact and ping for the next available controller. Maybe I’ll offer them twenty.”

  “No need for that,” the controller assured him hurriedly. “Twenty will be fine.”

  “No,” Rick corrected. “I said I would offer you ten. Twenty is what I’d offer to a controller who didn’t try to empty my pockets.” He waited until he knew the other was about to speak before he continued. “I believe the standard is five percent in cases like this…”

  “All right, ten,” the controller said, though he didn’t sound terribly disappointed. It was still a lucrative deal for him. “Is there any cargo aboard?”

  Rick could feel the man’s reluctance to name the cargo of this ship. He decided to remain vague about its nature, reasonably sure he was dealing with someone who knew what the Foxlight II had been carrying. “Taken by the raiders,” he replied, “but there is still twelve hundred w.u. of cargo aboard the shuttles.”

  He could almost hear the gears turning as the controller worked out the value.

  “Excellent!” the alien enthused. “That’s worth almost half the value of the ship! Give me a deca-day and I’ll have your money ready for you.”

  Rick made good use of the time. He backed into the sani-locker and parked his EVA suit against the holding plate. The myriad surfaces of the suit folded open and he stepped out, turning to watch the locker door slide shut. In ten minutes, the suit would be cleaner than new.

  He headed for the locker’s humanoid equivalent, a sealed chamber that sprayed a mist from almost every direction. Within minutes, he was clean and dry, and so was his suit. It was a good thing because he had no other clothes, except for the skins he had been wearing when he’d snuck aboard.

  He walked into the cockpit and sat down to have a good look at the station. It was a standard Dactari troopship, roughly the size of a Human-built carrier like the Canal but far more boxy. An untrained eye wouldn’t know that, of course, because the recycled ship now had a wide variety of docking wings attached, concealing its original shape.

  A massive ring-shield generator clung to the bottom surface of the vessel with a large carbon filament descending through the middle. Repeater rings focused and strengthened the shielded corridor at regular intervals. The entire assembly dwindled to a thin, blurred line before becoming lost in the haze of the planetary atmosphere below.

  He leaned forward, squinting at a hint of motion. An elevator resolved into view, climbing at an incredible speed. As it approached the station, it slowed gradually before sliding past the shield generator and out of sight.

  He expected a long pause before seeing the elevator again but he was surprised to see it dropping back to the planet within seconds. Before he could get beyond the surprise, his ‘agent’ called him back.

  He sounded very excited, which Rick took as a good sign. Their current goals were aligned, after all.

  “Two hundred thirty-eight thousand Imperial Credits,” he announced proudly.

  “That good, huh?” Rick was shocked by the response he knew his comment would trigger.

  “Best commission I’ve ever made!”

  If the commission was that much, Rick was looking at more than two million for himself. He quietly queried and found that the controller only earned eighty thousand credits a year, meaning Rick was sitting on a skilled employee’s lifetime earnings.

  Not a bad start to his new life.

  He docked the forward boarding portal of the shuttle with the station. When the heavy door slid out of the way, the orbital controller and the owner’s agent were both standing there. The controller was a Dactari but the salvage agent could have been a Human, for all Rick could tell.

  “Welcome to Chaco Benthic,” the controller said with a smile. He held out a hand, a small silver chip between his fingers. “Try not to spend it all in one place.”

  Rick took the chip and stepped across the threshold seconds before the agent would have given in to his impatience.

  Rick had to step off the ship before the agent went aboard; otherwise, there would have been complications in the transfer of ownership. Get something like that wrong and the lawyers would wrangle over it for years, leaving no value for the owners.

  “You heading down to the city?” The controller nodded back over his shoulder.

  “Sure.” Rick had never set foot in a real city. He’d seen them in images and videos but the only life he’d ever known was the little Human enclave on 3428. He was intensely curious to explore a place where millions of people lived out their lives.

  “Tether’s this way.” The Dactari turned, extending a hand. He led Rick down the companionway, turning onto a main thoroughfare.

  Rick was pretty sure, from old design images, that this long space had once housed one of the ship’s medium-caliber rail guns. Now, it was filled with hundreds of people. Some of them were racing along a central pedway while the rest were browsing the myriad shops that ranged along either side.

  “Your Dheema is a little cru
sty,” the controller observed. “Where’re you from?”

  An easy chuckle. Rick knew the question was coming. “I’m from a sour-gas ball of dirt out on the fringes. Doesn’t even show up on the database.”

  “How’d you fall in with G’Maj? Was he there trading?”

  Rick knew why he was asking. G’Maj was bringing spicewood here. If this controller could figure out where it came from, he’d be a rich man.

  “He wouldn’t tell me where he’d been,” Rick shrugged. “He picked up our distress call after we got hit by raiders. I wasn’t the only one that made it into an escape pod but I was the only one they didn’t use for target practice.” He feigned an angry tone. “I drifted behind the wreckage before they lost interest.”

  “Fornicating vitros!” the Dactari snapped. “You wipe out one nest of raiders and two more spring up the next day!”

  “Well, hopefully, my luck’s changing.”

  “I’d say it has.” A sidelong glance at the chip in Rick’s hand.

  They approached the breech end of what used to be the rail gun and the corridor opened onto the massive open space. The center of the chamber was dominated by the tether system’s docking carrousel.

  The controller led Rick past a long line of waiting passengers. A guard at the front of the line opened a gate with a nod to Rick’s guide.

  “Well, here we are.” The controller waved a hand up at the huge capsule, sitting ten meters away from the tether. “Front of the line for you! Don’t worry about the cost; I’ll cover the ride.” He grinned as an elevator slid into view. “It’s the least I can do, seeing how rich you’ve made me!”

  Rick nodded absently, watching the capsule slide out of the elevator mechanism and glide over to a debarkation ramp.

  “Hurry,” the guard urged, “or you’ll be stuck here for the next two centi-days.”

  A half hour seemed like a pretty fast cycle time but what did Rick know about orbital tethers? He squeezed in with the other passengers as the door slid down.

  The capsule lurched to the side, moving toward the empty elevator frame. Rick was pressed against the woman in front of him as the compartment came to a stop. A few seconds later, a green light flashed on the far wall and he felt heavier as the assembly began accelerating toward the planet.