Free Space

by Sean Danker

  The only thing she was sure of was that Idris hadn’t counted on taking women from the Service. That was a mistake he wouldn’t make again. He wouldn’t have the chance.

  After she found the Admiral and got him back, Salmagard was going to report Idris and his establishment to every authority that might even possibly have jurisdiction here. Indentured servitude might be legal in Free Trade space, but kidnapping wasn’t. Idris was going to go to prison.

  Diana closed the ramp, and they hurried into the cockpit. Diana dropped into the pilot’s seat and started to power up the shuttle. She pulled off her borrowed jacket, revealing rippling abdominal muscles and protruding ribs. Idris’ lingerie was becoming on Salmagard—not on Diana. And the pale woman’s chest supporter was soaked with sweat.

  “Are you all right?” Salmagard asked.

  Diana looked down at herself, then touched her collarbone with a finger, eyeing the beaded moisture on it.

  “I have some hormonal issues,” she said, pushing the jacket aside and strapping in. “All this excitement isn’t helping.” Her bare arms glistened, and veins stood out visibly on her taut skin and muscles. Something wasn’t quite right about her fingers, but Salmagard wasn’t sure what—or maybe it was the nails. Lights from the console reflected in Diana’s red eyes, and the red of her eyes was reflected in the readouts. It was unnerving.

  Salmagard decided not to press. It was clear to her now that the other woman’s singular appearance was not due to deliberate modifications. She was ill, and clearly sensitive about it. Maybe it was genetic; that would explain it. There was nothing worse than a loss of value to one’s DNA, and nothing would kill genetic prestige like the impurity of an undesirable mutation.

  Or, worse, an unattractive one.

  And she’d snapped those shackles with nothing but her muscles. She must have. If she was strong enough to break chains, knock doors out of their frames, and throw men bodily into walls hard enough to crack them, Salmagard was surprised Diana hadn’t simply broken free earlier.

  But no—even with the strength that was probably coming from an extremely troubled metabolism and adrenal glands, no human could break out of control cuffs, which numbed the hands and wrists.

  Salmagard strapped in, looking worriedly at the feeds from the cameras all over the shuttle that showed different angles of the bay. But no one was coming. Certainly not Idris; he was fast asleep, and would be for a while.

  Maybe they really could leave without a ripple. That wasn’t unreasonable; Salmagard felt she was owed a change of luck. First Nidaros; now this. It didn’t seem fair. Of course, Alice Everly had always cautioned Salmagard never to take fairness for granted.

  The shuttle was online. Now Diana was feeling out the controls. She noticed Salmagard’s worried look.

  “I’m a fighter pilot,” she snapped. “Give me a second.”

  Salmagard fixed her holo to her wrist and established an uplink with the Free Trade communications network. She began to compose an alert to send to the nearest consulate, which they could pass on to the GRs—but there weren’t many facts to include.

  Taken from Red Yonder. Man possibly named Idris. Willis. Freeber.

  At the very least, she could draw attention to what Idris was doing, but with so little information, the GRs weren’t going to do the Admiral and Sei any good in the immediate future. Only Salmagard and Diana could help them here and now.

  Apparently there was an atmosphere field outside, so there was no need to depressurize the little dock. Diana used Idris’ holo to open the bay doors.

  Salmagard made sure there was no mention of the Admiral, then sent the notification. It wasn’t going to help in any meaningful way—not in time to matter—but she had to do it. She looked up as Diana guided the shuttle out.

  They saw the fuel stop, the asteroid, and the large restaurant and shop that sat glowing atop it. So this was what was upstairs. The ships in phase lock around the place were all long-range cargo tugs. Under different circumstances, all of this would have struck Salmagard as being very novel and exotic.

  “I’ve got it now,” Diana said, tearing her eyes away from the feed and raising the starscape. “I can fly this. Where are they?”

  “He said something about the Bazaar. And something called Heimer’s place.”

  “I’ve got the Bazaar,” Diana said, pointing. “Should we check the other place first? Idris has it marked—there’s a route in place.”

  “Is it closer?”

  “It’s on the way.”

  “Do it.”

  Diana punched the location, highlighted the course, and pushed up the throttle.

  “It’s not a long way,” she said. It was difficult to tell if Diana was angry and looking hostile or if it was just her eyes that were scary. She sounded confident. “We’ll get them back.”

  Salmagard leaned back and closed her eyes, hoping the Admiral hadn’t tried anything stupid. Those two ruffians, the man and the woman who had kidnapped them, weren’t people to trifle with. Salmagard could tell that much by looking at them.

  But the Admiral liked to act as if there was nothing that could faze him, as if he couldn’t be intimidated. Like he had nothing to lose. He liked to make bold plays and take chances, but Salmagard wasn’t completely blind. He wasn’t well, and he couldn’t be trusted to perform at the level that his ego seemed to demand of him.

  She didn’t know why he felt the need to put on that show, but Salmagard had a feeling that he would put it on with or without an audience. And it wouldn’t end well.

  He needed her. There were just too many ways to picture him getting himself killed. Salmagard shook her head.

  “Worried?” Diana asked, glancing over.

  Salmagard nodded, swallowing her nausea.

  “Hey, what’s your name?”

  Salmagard blinked. Come to think of it, they hadn’t really been introduced. Sei had told them Diana’s name, but the Admiral had, of course, neglected to give theirs, though surely he had a perfectly safe alias for these situations.

  “Tessa,” she said.

  They shook hands.

  7

  “HE’S not going to answer,” Freeber said, pulling off his headset. “He’s going to ignore us.”

  “The hell he will,” Willis muttered, reaching back around her seat to snatch up the reader that Sei had toyed with earlier. “Not unless he wants me to get excited all over his social. I don’t think he wants that.”

  Sei and I were back in our seats in the cockpit of Freeber’s tug, securely strapped in.

  We were approaching the Bazaar, and I was gazing at the monolithic cubes that made it up, hoping there was someone reasonable in there that would buy us promptly. With my luck, they’d sell us to cannibals that wouldn’t even unmute us before they stuffed us in an oven.

  If that turned out to be the case, there wouldn’t be much we could do about it. That was cheery. It was probably the poison; I couldn’t feel my fingertips, but my toes were getting a little cold. It was starting.

  Willis, loath to pay the entry fee for four people—two of whom she did not particularly care for—seemed to be trying to lean on someone that owed her a favor.

  “Suddenly he wants to talk,” Freeber said, looking at a communication notification flashing on the viewport.

  “Tell him to let us in. We’ll just walk across and go in on foot,” Willis said.

  “He says his supervisor will see the tug.”

  “Tell him we’re bringing him new technical orders. That’s a good one,” Willis said. “The supervisor won’t know better unless he’s good at his job. And what are the odds of that?”

  “He doesn’t like it.”

  “I don’t care what he likes. Tell him I want a guide path in ten seconds or I’m going to redefine privacy and teach him the definition of pain.”

  She sounded lik
e she meant it. Sei gave me a look of exaggerated terror. Now that no one was pointing guns at anyone, he wasn’t worried at all; he was probably convinced Galactic Rescue would show up at any moment and rescue us. And maybe they would. But he wasn’t poisoned.

  Freeber winced, then relayed the message.

  After a moment, a green indicator appeared on the viewport.

  “That’s what I thought,” Willis said, putting the reader aside. “What a little bitch.”

  “Who are we even going to? Who’s buying?” Freeber glanced back at me. “They won’t be worth much on the open market, and we don’t have codes.”

  “They’re still imperials,” Willis said.

  “That just makes them hotter without codes.”

  She let out a hiss of frustration. “There is that. Shit.”

  “So who?”

  “I don’t know. We’ll have to ask around.”

  Now Sei wasn’t amused. He was starting to think about the sorts of people who would want to buy undocumented humans, and that wasn’t a pleasant line of thinking.

  It wasn’t out of the question that we’d get lucky and be sold to someone who didn’t know what they were buying. If someone respectable was tricked into taking us, they’d have no choice but to let us go when they learned of our circumstances—but the odds were against that. Without proof that we had signed ourselves away to servitude, we were nothing more than kidnapped imperials.

  There weren’t very many respectable people looking to buy those. The people who would be buying wouldn’t have any interest in hearing our side of things. We weren’t people anymore; we were contraband.

  “He better open those doors,” Willis growled, leaning forward. A moment later a pair of bay doors on the Bazaar’s exterior began to vent. Lights flashed and guide paths appeared. Maintenance robots crawled around the outside of the bay doors, and a figure in a tech suit was visible under the big coolant distributors. I could see the glow of his welding torch.

  That was a good career. A safe career. Mostly. I could’ve become a tech. That wasn’t where my aptitudes were, but it wasn’t like it was beyond me. But it was too late to change now.

  The Bazaar was not pretty. It was just a gargantuan cluster of metal boxes, or at least that was the exterior. We weren’t seeing its good side.

  Someone with an actual right to be here must have allowed the tug to get this close, and now they were guiding us in. I wondered if there was anyone in this sector who Freeber and Willis didn’t know. Or anyone who actually liked them.

  The tug glided inside and landed. It wasn’t a large bay; in fact, it was barely large enough for the tug and its occupants. A small fleet of maintenance robots had been shoved aside to make room for us. They were spindly, ugly little models I’d never seen before. They reminded me of carnivorous plants I’d seen in a drama once.

  There were workbenches and big carts filled with tools. Nearly everything was maintained by robots; they were faster and more reliable than humans—but someone had to maintain the robots. In some cases, that would be other robots. But then someone had to maintain those. It was thankless work, but without the techs in these bays, no station could function.

  The Bazaar was supposed to be all about that key precept of trade: that he who can attract and please the most customers is king—so appearances were important. But here, no one was looking. No one was trying to impress anyone.

  Shuttles probably came in to pick the bots up and ferry them where they were needed in the Bazaar. The place was big enough that to get from one end of the station to the other, it would often be faster to take a shuttle than to try to make your way through the markets themselves.

  Most reasonably sized stations had trams or multidirectional lifts, something to help people get around.

  The Bazaar had neither, but the interior was so large that people actually piloted personal vehicles inside. Not the carts and skiffs that you saw on normal stations, but real flyers and ground cars.

  The bay began to pressurize, and Freeber powered down the tug.

  Willis released me and Sei, pushing us ahead of her. We watched our captors arm themselves and don jackets to conceal their weapons. Neither of them looked happy.

  Freeber muttered something into his holo and nodded to Willis, who hit the release. The doors opened and the ramp lowered.

  The service bay was cluttered, and it was an embarrassment. It might as well have had the words Built by the lowest bidder stamped on the bulkheads. There was a decidedly flimsy look to all of it, though frankly I got that impression from the rest of the station as well. After all, the Bazaar’s cubist design was a cost-cutting measure, not a stylistic choice.

  As for the people who worked in this bay—the decals plastered all over the walls told me everything I needed to know about them. No one was safe from advertising, anywhere. All of the holographic ads I could see were for chems and VR compatibility. There were a couple of guys in the far corner clustered around a large holoscreen that was meant for robotic diagnostics, but they were using it to watch a broadcast. They were making a lot of noise, and one of them was holding up a stack of Free Trade currency bonds.

  I saw a logo flash on the screen; it was something from the Baykara Network. Maybe they were watching New Brittia, or maybe they were watching something from the Baykara Games. Either way, someone was probably about to die. Gambling was the mechanism of the Baykara business model, and human life was the fuel.

  An older man in tech coveralls was making his way toward us looking distinctly ruffled. As he walked, he disengaged a pair of hand protectors that lit up and chirped a warning at him. His eyes flashed, and very suddenly, startling all of us, he flung the protectors to the deck.

  “You can push me around until the end of the universe,” he snarled at Willis. “But you won’t last more than an hour in there without entry codes.”

  “We will if we take your ride,” Willis said, giving me a hard shove. The floor was covered in oil and metal shavings; I managed to keep my balance and stay upright, barely.

  “The hell is this?”

  “Our merch. Who can unload them for us?”

  The guy shrugged. “Just take them to market.”

  “Can’t get as much,” Willis said. “And no codes, remember? There has to be somebody.”

  The older man folded his arms. He looked back at the hatch, then up at a bank of windows high on the wall. He shook his head, nostrils flared, barely controlling his temper. His guys over in the corner weren’t paying any attention; they were even louder now, cheering at something on the broadcast.

  “What are they?” he asked, looking at me, then at Sei.

  “Imperials,” Freeber said.

  “Undocumented? Of course they are.”

  Willis gestured impatiently.

  “You want someone who wants to buy two Evagardian men who don’t want to be bought.”

  “There has to be a market,” Willis said, eyeing the rows of maintenance bots. “Someone who doesn’t like imperials. Someone who runs something like Idris does.”

  “People don’t pay much for people they don’t plan to keep. And not very many people like to keep people that don’t want to be kept.”

  “Spare me. There has to be someone. There’s always someone.”

  The old man just scowled and opened a holo in the air in front of him. He swiped around a bit. “There might be a guy,” he said. “A specialty guy.”

  “How do we get in touch with him?”

  “You don’t. He’s gray market, cagey. You have to go there physically.”

  Willis groaned. “Where?”

  “His place is in Fenix Cube. He calls himself something weird. The Dane. You know they get all those VIPs from the hotel, and he’s that guy, you know.”

  “I don’t know,” Freeber said.

  “That guy that gets thin
gs that people are too shy to ask for.”

  “Who’s shy here?” Willis asked, looking baffled.

  The old man wasn’t in the mood. “Make it quick.”

  “Yeah, I want to have a nice romantic weekend at the Bazaar,” Willis said, snatching the crystal he was offering.

  He didn’t even reply. He was already walking away. There was a shout of triumph from the techs in the corner.

  “This guy’s going to want a commission.” Willis groaned. “If he even takes them. God, I’m so sick of imperials.”

  Freeber let her vent. He guided me and Sei along behind her as she stormed off toward the hatch, throwing a venomous glare at the old man, who was ignoring her.

  We entered a narrow, dingy corridor with a malfunctioning recycler, then a stairway that rattled and shook underfoot.

  For a moment I was struck with vertigo; the stairs extended up and down farther than I could see—there were at least a hundred levels. I thought about bulling into Freeber and knocking him over the railing, but there were nets every few levels to prevent those sorts of accidents. A digital mural at the rear of the stairwell flickered. It was meant to look like an endless strip of blue sky, but the display was pixelized and corrupted. A few floors up, a piece of it several meters across appeared to be missing. It hummed loudly and hurt my eyes.

  Maybe the stairs weren’t completely steady, or maybe my sense of balance was starting to go. I had to be careful not to trip. It wasn’t easy to keep track of time, and I wasn’t exactly sure how long it had been since I injected on the shuttle to Imperial Pointe.

  One flight down, we were stopped by a locked door. Some crude artwork on the wall depicted the Ganraen flagship crashing into the Royal Capital, and there was a trampled plush toy on the grating beneath it. A fish. No, a shark. A shark wearing a hat. There was a tear, and his stuffing was coming out.