by J. S. Morin
Not only was Savior Carl a criminal—which Rai Kub had somewhat realized before embarking on his quest—but he didn’t need a cowardly, clumsy stuunji on his ship. It was only through an act of kindness that he was here at all. Now, instead of repaying a debt on behalf of him and his sister, he was incurring an even deeper indebtedness—one that he might lack the skills or lifespan to repay.
Carl’s voice on the comm on the wall startled Rai Kub from his musings. “Hey, things were a bit of a rush back there.”
“I’m so sorry,” Rai Kub replied. But he realized he’d have to get up and press the button on the comm panel for anyone else to hear his reply. Running without proper warm-up had left his hips and back sore. He grunted and levered himself to his feet.
“Just wanted to say: nice work. The way you handled that azrin showed some real promise.”
Halfway to the comm panel, Rai Kub paused. Nice work? He reached over and keyed the comm. “But I ruined everything.”
Carl chuckled. “You really are new at this. We got what we came for. No one got hurt—well, none of us anyway. Things never go exactly as planned. Just get close enough to get the job done. Today, you helped get the job done.”
# # #
Yomin looked across the bed at Archie. She was tethered to a computer core via her datalens; Archie connected directly to a port in his torso. The data crystal from Parvin Smails was plugged into the core’s access port.
“Do you want to be the one to tell him, or shall I?” Archie asked.
Yomin yanked the cable from her datalens and threw the loose end to the blankets. “Sure. Because that’s going to go over so well. ‘Sorry, Carl, that crystal we got is gibberish after nearly getting killed dealing for it.’ No way.”
“I was rather hoping you’d volunteer. I don’t relish drawing Mort’s ire, and any excuse is one too many for my liking.”
Yomin pursed her lips, grabbed the end of the cable, and plugged back in. “Maybe it’s just a secondary encryption of some sort.”
Lines of data flew past in her field of view. They appeared to be organized in a file structure, but nothing was interpretable by any program she had. It was like reading a menu, not realizing it was written in phonetic Jiara. She paused, glancing over at Archie. “You speak any laaku languages?”
“Egads, no!”
“I was just thinking—”
“That I’m an esoteric lover of all things scientific? I should think not!”
Yomin flopped back, letting her head poof onto the pillow. Data continued to stream past in a parade of nonsense. “We can’t just go back to line one. We gotta give Carl something to go on.”
“What we really need is a plan that doesn’t involve picking the pockets of every Tom, Dick, and Harvey who ever sold a pencil sharpener to Harmony Bay.”
“What the hell’s a pencil sharpener?”
Archie waved a hand. “Doesn’t matter. Point is: We’re letting Carl run the planning, and Carl’s track record is substandard, to put it generously. Ask any of his old crew. Roddy’ll talk your acoustic inputs into overload on the topic.”
Yomin stared up at the ceiling through the data, hardly even seeing it anymore. “You got a better plan?”
Unplugging himself from the computer core, Archie stood and paced amid Yomin’s discarded clothing. “It would be wonderful if we could just cut out the middleman and blast their ship to smithereens. Gah, I can hardly jest about that without my bloody overrides slavering at the mouth.”
“Well, what if we just stole the ship? I mean, no harm to anyone in that, right?”
“Oh, because hijacking a top-of-the-line custom-built star cruiser is just so bleeding easy. You may take note: a gentleman with a name like a head cold just chased us off a planet most folks wouldn’t take cash to land on.”
Yomin pushed herself up onto her elbows. Something was clicking into place, as if the galaxy’s own encryption was on the verge of failure. “Wait a minute. You’re forgetting something.”
“That would be rare.” Archie sounded more prickly than offended.
“Mort and Esper. They sat on the ship because Carl was worried they’d foul the atmo barriers.”
Pausing in his pacing, Archie stroked his chin. “You have a point there. A pair of wizards, especially when one is Mordecai The Brown… yes, there might be something there. The chief wizard on the Bradbury is a nasty piece of work, but then again…”
“So is Mort,” Yomin said with a grin. “So… assuming you had two wizards and a good idea where the Bradbury was going to be, how would you steal it?”
# # #
The common room was packed. It was easier to pack, now that Rai Kub took up a quarter of the space by himself. There was a festive atmosphere as Archie and Yomin had turned the reveal of the data crystal’s contents into a live event. The food processor was churning out batches of popcorn. Esper passed around ice cream from her stash. Mort was carefully floating beers around the room with only the barest flicker in the lights to show for it.
Whatever they found, it had to have been supernova bright to warrant this buildup.
Archie strode to the holo-projector, chin held high. “Ladies and the rest of you, may I present the starship Bradbury.” The now familiar shape of the Harmony Bay black ops ship sprang into three dimensions in front of the robotic professor’s face. “She is 450 meters long and 100 abeam. The ship has eight decks, a mid-sized hangar, and two smaller cargo hangars. Its armaments are comparable to an Earth Navy destroyer. It boasts a crew of over 160, including five Convocation wizards, three of whom specialize in star-drive maintenance. More than half the crew is comprised of scientists with various special projects that make use of the Bradbury’s unique brand of scientific procurement. Her commander is Yasmira Dominguez.”
“Yeah, we met her,” Carl said. “Not for nothing, but this all sounds like stuff we knew from your old data. What’s on that crystal from Smails?”
“Gibberish,” Yomin said after quickly swallowing her mouthful of dragon fruit ice cream. “We got had.”
The common room erupted in grumbles and accusations. Archie stood at the center of it all. If a robot could be imagined to grin, he certainly would have been.
No one noticed at first, but slowly the changing view in the holovid field drew the attention of the squabbling crew. The gleaming white exterior of the Bradbury was washing over in a red hue reminiscent of Carl’s racing Squall. By the time the whole ship was red, everyone in the room was watching. Then, finally, the name on the side faded, replaced in giant white letter by “Mobius II.”
“OK,” Carl said. “I’ll bite. What’s the gag?”
Archie planted his hands on his hips. “We’re going to steal the Bradbury.”
Mort harrumphed. “See? Brain locked in a metal box goes bonkers after a while.”
The Bradbury was a pretty tempting shade of red. It gleamed like a kid’s holo version of an apple, not the mottled green-and-red of most real apples. But still, it was a starship, and the real thing was a cold, clinical white. “Yomin, take Archie and see if you can diagnose what’s wrong with him.”
“No. He’s right. We have what we need to pull this off.”
# # #
Yomin was Step 1. It hadn’t been her intention to end up as the trailblazer of the operation, but that’s how the dust settled. The plan needed her on the inside. The Bradbury’s data security wasn’t vulnerable to outside influences. That meant someone needed direct access before any other part of the plan could advance.
She felt naked without her datalens. It was tucked safely in her quarters back on the Mobius. Any personal possessions she brought along would be subject to search and possibly confiscation. Yomin had to carry all the data she needed right in the wet, gooey matter of her brain. Not the most reliable of storage mediums, but one of the hardest to crack with a decryption algorithm.
The bar where she awaited her contact nestled in among the brothels and casinos of Reno VII. She wasn’t even su
re there were six other Renos in the galaxy; the founders probably just liked the “3+4” dice logo they’d plastered onto every merchandisable object in the system. Her table had the logo glowing from underneath the varnished surface. Her drink had it etched into the side of the glass. The servers had it embroidered onto what little cloth their uniforms bore.
Truth be told, Yomin could have enjoyed the atmosphere if she had the cash to gamble and the peace of mind to drink something with alcohol in it. The whole place was a sad, desperate party, reeking of mathematically challenged optimism and a craving for sex that a big win might buy. Nubile bodies patrolled the tight spaces between tables, but sober eyes could see the marks of extensive cosmo and signs of chem addictions galore.
“This table seats two,” a silky female voice said as its owner slid onto the stool across from Yomin. Without her datalens, Yomin had to size her up by eye. She was thirty, maybe thirty-two if her looks were all natural. Blonde hair twisted over her shoulder in a braid to lay across the open front of her jacket. She licked her lips, full and red with a chroma glow that made them stand out in the dim bar lighting. As Yomin looked into the pale blue eyes, she had to remind herself that this was her contact, not a chance encounter.
“Can I buy you a drink?” Yomin asked. “I hear they serve huckleberry tea here.”
The Harmony Bay contact relaxed her shoulders. “Thank God. Sorry, but I guessed wrong the first time. There’s a woman close to the front entrance that fits your description.” She closed up the front of her jacket, hiding the low-cut blouse beneath and looked over both shoulders.
“So how do we do this?” Yomin asked, leaning across to close the gap between them.
Her contact pulled out a frequency scanner and gave it a glance. “We’re clean. No one sniffing on audio. I’m Cassidy Keating.” She shook Yomin’s hand across the table. “Your credentials check out, if you are who you say you are. I’m here to check your story and take a DNA sample.”
“How do you plan to collect it?” Yomin asked, feeling her face warm instantly as she realized what she’d said.
Cassidy shrugged. “Just a quick blood check.” She pulled a palm-length cylinder from her pocket. “We can take care of it right now.” Yomin offered her forearm, and Cassidy pressed the cylinder to the spot where her elbow bent. A chill spread from the spot as a hiss popped. Yomin rubbed the spot as Cassidy tucked the sample away. “Now, as for the missing six years since your ship disappeared…”
“Working odd jobs under assumed IDs. I can’t exactly go back to ARGO space like nothing happened. The navy would have my brain sliced into platters under a neuron scope.”
“What happened to your ship?”
Yomin twitched a smile. “Technical malfunction entirely unrelated to data warfare.”
“Care to elaborate on that?”
“Nope. Sorry. Any good answer is above my former pay grade. Anything I could give you wouldn’t do you much good and would get me lined up for treason charges. Bad business.” She took a sip of her soda, wishing it was whiskey.
Cassidy rubbed at the side of her face. “There’s got to be something you can give me. I can’t bring you in on your word about this.”
“Lemme put it this way: your people wanted a data specialist. I’m navy trained in data warfare. I’ve got the skills you need. If you only want me for whatever classified info you think I have, I think this meeting is over.” Yomin stood to leave, not regretting the abandonment of her soda.
Cassidy shot an arm out to grab her. “No. That’s fine. Anything else was a bonus. It’ll actually look good in your personnel file that you can be trusted with sensitive information. The sample data dive you sent actually got you the job.”
“I’m in?” Yomin asked.
“You’re in.”
“Great! Where do I go from here?” Yomin knew damn well. There were no travel arrangements to be made, no rendezvous to schedule. The Bradbury was in system.
“You’ll come with me. Hand over your datapad and any other devices that can communicate, record, or… shoot. You’ll be assigned new equipment once we’re on board the Bradbury.”
“Huh? Bradbury… your ship named after the actor from Two Nights in Her Arms?”
“No. The author of Fahrenheit 451.”
“Never heard of him. Samir Bradbury, though…” She growled in the back of her throat and waggled her eyebrows.
“It’s just a name. Neither man is aboard the ship. All you’ll find there is the greatest mobile collection of scientific minds mankind has collected.”
# # #
Archie was Step 2. He was also Step 7, but that didn’t matter unless Yomin was captured or killed. Right now, his job was twofold. First, he was to monitor certain comm IDs for any word from Yomin. Second, he was to take over her role on the Mobius and work the advanced scientific magics her various devices were capable of.
But for now, all seemed well. Archie sat at one end of the couch, hands folded in his lap, watching And Then There Were None with Mort and Roddy. It was a farcical mess with a plot conceived in the mind of a cannabis aficionado. Its amusement value was in its utter failure as a vehicle of storytelling.
“That fellow would have lost his job on a daily basis,” Archie noted. “Can’t be giving out free chrysanthemums to every lazypants customer with a sob story.”
“That’s not the point,” Mort countered. “You’re supposed to notice that it’s an attempt to get in good with the girls he’s giving replacements to. Pay attention; not a single male specimen among his beneficiaries of largess.”
“Bah, a whole species where you can’t tell the difference.”
The holovid paused. Roddy lowered the remote and fixed Archie with a glare. “Excuse me, Robo-Grandpa. You’d think with scanners for eyes, you could tell the difference between a male and female laaku.”
“Not worth the effort. Your species is well enough populated that obviously you people can tell the difference. For all that it matters, I see a shopkeeper’s assistant who doesn’t deserve his job.”
“Fine, smart guy. Hundro of Telmarain does lose his job over this business. He gets the girl of his dreams. They move to the Kestria colony, and he manages her acting career.”
“You bloody rodent,” Mort snapped. “I haven’t seen this one yet.”
“Blame the xenoist.”
Archie stood up. “I’m no xenoist. I’m merely a devotee of proper cinema. A proper holovid takes place in five dimensions, the fifth being a depth in character. A mere three special dimensions and the passage of time are not enough to render entertainment from dreary imaginings of a dullard.”
“You know what?” Roddy said. “I think I’m going to go reacquaint myself with my species’ gender differentiation.” He stormed off in the direction of his quarters, tossing the remote over his shoulder as he went.
Archie harrumphed. “Sensitive chap.”
“Don’t you have work to do?” Mort asked, narrowing one eye.
“Of course.” Little did Mort comprehend the intricacies of robotic life. While his eyes had been taking in sub-par xeno holovid claptrap, his short-range transmitter was interfaced with Yomin’s computer core, back in their quarters. Not a minute had gone by in the days since her departure that Archie hadn’t checked each of the twelve comm IDs where she might leave messages for him. “In fact, I was going to wait until the end of our exercise in mental pacification to mention it, but since it appears we have reached an untimely conclusion…”
“Oh, for the love of hamburgers, just spit it out.”
“It’s time we got Esper looking for a job.”
# # #
“Has it ever occurred to you to knock?” Shoni asked, looking up from her makeshift workstation.
Roddy eased the door shut behind him. “Not really. These are my quarters, so I sorta figured knocking was for other people. I can go grab you a...” he was about to say beer before catching himself. “An ice cream or something if you’re uptight about somethi
ng.”
“These are our quarters, as I recall your sales advert on the topic. And I’m in the middle of some rather exacting work here. Go find someone else to bother for the next five hours or so.”
Now that he looked more closely, Shoni was showing ragged edges. Her fur was unkempt around the eyes, and her clothing was damp in places with sweat. Roddy crept up behind her and rested his hands on her shoulders. As she hunched over a stereoscope, peering into a workspace so tiny he could barely conceive of it, he began to knead the stiff muscles.
Shoni’s hands slowed, until she set them down and sighed. A low moan issued forth as Roddy continued to loosen the tension from her shoulders. With a quick shake of her head, she shrugged him off. “I have work to do. Run along. This is no time for mating.”
Roddy scowled. He was in no mood for mating, himself. He just wanted a little fun. Her calling it “mating” always made it sound like they were trying to raise a family. It reduced them to a syringe and a petri dish, trying to combine DNA for future incubation.
“Fine. Whatever. When you’re done with whatever the hell it is you’re working on, I’ll be in the engine room.”
It was nice and quiet down there, and no one cared what he did. Shoni’s mystery project was supposedly part of their big hijacking plot, but she wouldn’t even tell him what it was. Maybe Roddy wouldn’t have time for her when she was done. That’d teach her.
# # #
Mort wasn’t the next step in the plan, but he had some soul searching to do before his time came. Fortunately, as someone with a fully rendered, three-dimensional soul to walk around in, Mort was uniquely qualified to conduct a proper search of his.
When in doubt, he napped. As slumber claimed him, he drifted into the realm of Mortania. Setting off down the woodland path, he sought out his grandfather’s cottage once more. From outside, everything was just as he had left it.
Nebuchadnezzar The Brown was a bedrock feature of Mortania, its founding father in many respects. He had been there since before Mort could fashion a world, when it was merely a state of existence separate from corporeal form. How his grandfather kept his sanity in those first few months was something Mort hoped never to learn. Even Archimedes’s situation seemed humane by comparison.