Calculated Risk

by K. S. Ferguson

  Rafe nodded. Time was the thing they didn't have. Kama was right. If the miners started a shooting war with the cruisers, the situation would quickly escalate into a bloodbath with the EcoMech yacht caught in the middle. And it would all come down on his father, who'd been hoodwinked by Leon into backing the purchase. Skyrocketing anger at Leon, his father, and the stupidity of the whole awful situation drove him to his feet to face Browning.

  "What did you find in the business records?" he demanded.

  The smelter supervisor whirled on the Oasis tech. "Well?"

  Her face shaded red, and she thrust her hands deeper into her pockets. "It's complicated, and I'm still working on it."

  "Is that code for 'I haven't got a clue'?" Rafe asked.

  She flinched under his assault, and a twinge of regret rippled through him, but it was no match for his rage.

  "Here's what we're going to do. You're going to put Greg in a shuttle and take him back to the EcoMech ship. In the morning, I'm going to talk to Leon Goldman and tell him the situation is under control. I'll tell him I'm investigating your ownership claim and putting the miners' fears to rest. In return, he'll send the cruisers after that cargo drone that Levine escaped on. Do you think your men will accept that?"

  Browning's face hardened, but before he could say anything, Greg stepped forward.

  "I'm not going back. You said I'd be your assistant. Besides, if there's two of us here, the mercs will be even less likely to attack."

  It had been a shitty day, and the dam holding Rafe's anger and frustration burst. "You're not my assistant, and you're not staying on the station. Grow up, kid. I don't need you under foot."

  Shock registered on the boy's face, and then came the welling of tears that he struggled to hold back. No one spoke. Rafe felt ten times worse than he had a moment earlier and sat heavily on the cot, unable to face the damage he'd done. How like his own father he was. Shame crept over him.

  "Sorry, McTavish," came Kama's soft voice in the sudden quiet. "Greg's right. With two of you here, the mercs will be less likely to attack, and the miners will be more likely to believe you're sincere about helping them. He stays."

  Rafe watched the medic reattach his IV and hang a fresh bag of blood from the pole. So little time before the fuse burned down and the station exploded. He wouldn't sit helpless waiting for it to happen. "Give me access to the station's business records."

  "Now?" asked Browning.

  "It's the middle of the bleeding night!" Kama protested. "You need to rest."

  "Now," Rafe said.

  Kama came to stand by the cot. "They're a mess. It would take a team of accountants days to untangle them."

  "Now," he repeated. "We're wasting time. Where's my nanocom?"

  The medic fished in a drawer and pulled out the shattered remains of his device. The gauntlet was battered and a chunk of the crystal screen was missing. Rafe wanted to toss it across the room, but he wasn't sure he had the strength.

  Kama set her bag on the counter and rooted around, pulling out all manner of strange electronic equipment. She plugged a stick drive into a nanocom, tapped the screen, and then pulled the drive before handing him the device and another box he thought might be a filmie encoder—although he'd never seen one quite like it—and a dozen filmie sheets.

  "You can code documents onto the filmies, read them, and recode. It'll be easier than using the nanocom screen."

  "You have a local copy of the records?" he asked, accusation plain in his voice.

  Her face blanched, and a wary look came into her eyes. "I thought we might need to send documents off to lawyers or something, so I made a copy."

  Legally speaking, it was data theft, and he considered calling her on it, especially after she'd kept Greg trapped here with him. But she had the stunner, and he might need her help later, so he let it pass. Browning, muscles still taut and face like stone, shook his head and left.

  "Let's get you down," said the medic. "Prone's the safest position for you."

  "Screw that," replied Rafe. "Get me some pillows. And coffee."

  "No stimulants, not before tomorrow."

  "You can bring it, or I can fetch it myself. Make it large, hot, and very, very black."

  "Come on, Greg," Kama said. "Let's get you bunked down for the night."

  She took the boy's arm and guided him from the room. The medic brought pillows and left. Rafe sagged back into them and closed his eyes. He couldn't remember ever feeling so physically drained, and now he intended to pull an all-nighter examining the station records. His anger seethed and glowed like a banked fire. He hoped it would provide him the strength to keep going.

  The medic brought him coffee—small and tepid—checked his IV, and left again. Kama returned, dumped her duffel under a spare cot and stretched out. She didn't seem inclined toward conversation, which suited him fine. He ignored her and dug into the station's records.

  At midnight, he knew he was onto something. By four, the scope astounded him. By five, he'd fallen into an exhausted sleep, the nanocom in his lap and filmies scattered over and around the cot.

  A little after six, the rustling of filmies woke Rafe. His eyes were gummed shut, he had a crick in his neck, and his back ached. He couldn't remember covering himself with the blanket that now laid over him. He supposed he should be glad he'd lived to see another day, but 'glad' wasn't in his repertoire. He gingerly rubbed the sleep from his bruised eyes and saw Kama stowing the electronics she'd loaned him in her duffel. The filmies lay in drifts on the floor around the cot.

  "Hey," she said.

  He glanced around. No medic in sight. Good. He had a bone to pick with the Oasis technician, and a little blowing on the embers of his anger brought the flames back to life.

  "I thought you were on my side."

  She gave him a long, cool look. "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "First you warn me that the miners intend to hold me as a hostage, and then you encourage them to do exactly that. Is that some kind of wacky reverse psychology?"

  He floundered around trying to sit up straighter, too sore to make a proper job of it. She stepped in, lifted him under his arms, and fluffed his pillows before settling him against them. Her hair was freshly shampooed, and she smelled of lavender and spices. He felt like a helpless child, which only increased his anger.

  "I can almost forgive you for keeping me here," he argued, "but you should have let the kid go back to the EcoMech ship. He's just an innocent bystander."

  "Don't you see? The miners are innocent bystanders, too. They didn't ask to be swindled. Most of them invested their life savings in the buyout. They deserve justice—and safety—as much as Greg does."

  "Greg isn't preparing torpedoes for launch."

  "The miners wouldn't be either if you corporate types weren't running roughshod over them." Frustration edged her voice. "Cruisers full of marines? Maybe you should try talking to them like men with free will instead of slaves."

  She straightened his blanket, tucking it in at the foot of the bed. He thought about thrashing his legs and jerking it loose again. Then she gathered the filmies scattered on the floor and stacked them on a nearby counter.

  "Thanks for tidying up. Maybe I do need an assistant." His juvenile quip came out more bitter than he'd intended.

  "Greg's a great kid. You could do worse."

  Rafe's guilt over his behavior the previous evening blossomed. He hoped his bruises covered the heat creeping up his cheeks. Why couldn't he control his mouth around this woman?

  "Family relationships have no place in a business environment."

  She perched on the edge of his cot, and her deep brown eyes seemed to contain the wisdom of the ages. He was lost in an insane world, and they were a beacon of sanity.

  "All you've done since you got here is dis your family. You deny you know them, you lie to your nephew, and when he risks his life for you, you push him away with verbal abuse. What's up with that?"

  "It's a long story." He
plucked at the blanket and considered how to change the subject.

  "I'm not going anywhere," she said.

  He was so tired; tired of the guilt and the pain. Tired of keeping it bottled up inside. Tired of being alone. He might die here, and no one would ever hear his remorse, the apology he'd never made for the damage he'd done. The walls crumbled, and the words came out unbidden.

  "Years ago, George Tanaka, Aaron Goldman, and my father, Cullen McTavish, pooled their resources and founded EcoMech. They needed capital to grow, so they issued stock, but being both greedy and paranoid, they worried that someday the founding families might lose control. One drunken night while their children were still very young, they hatched a plan to inter-marry their children into each other's families to consolidate the power of future generations."

  Kama's face grew troubled. "Arranged marriages? That's barbaric. How could they assure that the children wouldn't revolt when they grew up?"

  A grim smile. "Brainwashing. But that's another story. My sister, Shannon, was paired with Leon Goldman, Aaron's only child. My brother, Miguel, would marry Amaya Tanaka, the elder Tanaka daughter, and I would marry Youko Tanaka, George's other child.

  "But the patriarchs underestimated the stubborn streak in the McTavish line and my mother's subtle counter-indoctrination. Shannon started the whole house of cards tumbling down when she refused Leon and married a lowly contract field worker, Ben Nighthorse. Leon married Amaya Tanaka instead. My father, concerned about the power consolidation between the Goldmans and the Tanakas, decided that Miguel had to marry Youko.

  "I knew it would never happen. My brother was just as stubborn as Shannon—and gay. To please my father, when I turned 16, I proposed to Youko. Instead of pleased, my father was outraged. He saw my actions as an attempt to usurp my brother. But Tanaka wanted the union, so Youko and I were married."

  "At 16? You were still children."

  "Not in those days. You may be too young to remember. Earth still reeled from the ice flu epidemic. A third of the population dead, another third disabled with scarred lungs and failing hearts. Earth passed the Mandatory Service Act forcing the off-planet colonies, which had been spared from the flu, to send every able-bodied colonist between the ages of 16 and 35 for a year of volunteer service on Earth, doing the crucial jobs that the disabled couldn't. EA also tried to off-load the disabled to the colonies by instituting population growth quotas. If corporate colonies didn't meet their targets, they'd lose their planetary leases."

  Kama's face darkened. "And so the slave trade began."

  Rafe shifted, uneasy. He'd hit a nerve. But still he plowed on. The coming horror welled in him like an unstoppable flood. "To avoid meeting their quotas by taking on the disabled, corporations offered generous stock grant incentives for children born on-planet. The founding families set the example. Two surrogate mothers were assigned to Youko and me, and Youko's eggs were harvested and fertilized. She and the surrogate mothers each received a viable fetus.

  "Seven months later, my number came up for mandatory service. Youko was furious. She'd be stuck on Harvest with 'a bunch of squalling brats' while I escaped to Earth. We argued. God, did we argue, every minute we were together." He stopped. It seemed so crass to talk of his marriage this way, but he couldn't help it. He'd hidden the truth too long.

  "On the morning of my departure, I rose and showered early, hoping to avoid an ugly scene. When I returned to our bedroom, it was drenched in blood. Youko lay dead on our bed, her womb sliced open. Our daughter…" Rafe's voice broke. "Our daughter lay beside her, a kitchen knife protruding from her tiny chest. I couldn't look at her like that, so small and violated. I pulled the knife from her and cradled her in my arms. I think I screamed. It's all a blur.

  "I was frightened. I thought we had an intruder in the house. I went to find the surrogate mothers, who lived with us. They were dead too, butchered in their beds." In his mind, he saw them as they were the night before their deaths, not much older than he'd been then and brimming with merriment as they teased him while he packed.

  "I must have set off the security alarm when I staggered out the front door. The EcoMech security chief arrived, along with my father. My father took one look around and asked, 'Why'd you do it?' That's when the interrogation began in earnest."

  "He thought you'd killed them?" Kama asked, incredulous.

  "I was covered in blood. So much blood. And my fingerprints were on the knife—along with Youko's."

  Kama sucked in a breath and took his hand, trembling on the blanket. "She'd killed them all and then herself."

  Rafe nodded, cleared his throat, blinked back tears. "The security chief cuffed me, and while he was loading me in his flyer, Aaron Goldman arrived. He went inside the house. When he came out, he vomited in the garden by the door. He listened to me and believed I was innocent. There was no ironclad way to exonerate me. Questions would always remain, especially considering the extraordinary scene in the house. He told my father and the security chief that EcoMech couldn't afford the scandal.

  "Then Aaron Goldman cleaned me up, took me to the shuttleport, and put me on my flight to Earth, as though nothing had happened. All record of the surrogate mothers disappeared. The official report states that Youko had a miscarriage and bled to death alone at home later that afternoon. I haven't seen or spoken to any of my family since. I'm ashamed to face them."

  "Ashamed? You have nothing to be ashamed of."

  Rafe drew in a deep, ragged breath. "I failed them, failed them all: the surrogate mothers, my children, Youko, even my father. He still believes I'm a murderer. I should have seen that Youko was unbalanced, been a better husband, more supportive. I could have delayed my service or bribed my way out of it completely. Truthfully, I looked forward to being away from her. My selfishness killed them."

  "Youko killed them, and you're as much a victim as the dead. Vishnu! You lost your children. There's nothing more painful, and you suffered that loss in silence and the company of strangers." Her eyes brimmed with tears, and she squeezed his hand. He detected an undercurrent of shared experience in her voice. It stabbed at his heart.

  After a moment she said, "Your nephew loves you, you know."

  Rafe laughed in derision. "He doesn't know me."

  "He does. He told me about you last night when I walked him to my quarters. You used to take him for rides in your flyer when he was a toddler. You let him eat ice cream for dinner when you babysat him. He's followed your career, knows everything you've done. He worships you."

  Rafe's emotions swung from despair to annoyance. He didn't want a family. He was done with them. Families caused nothing but pain. He looked down at her hand, still holding his. What would it be like if she held it forever? No, he wouldn't think about it.

  "I'm a piss-poor role model. He should pick another."

  "His actions speak for him. He'd never been in a spacesuit before last night, but he could see you were in trouble, and he came to back you up." She lifted his chin so he couldn't avoid her eyes. "It's called unconditional love."

  "I don't deserve it."

  She sighed, withdrew her hand, and rose. "Stay put. I'll be back shortly."

  "Bring me coffee," he commanded, suddenly embarrassed by his outpouring.

  She laughed. "Corporate types. Think everyone's a servant."

  She tossed her duffel over her shoulder and walked away. When she opened the door to leave, Greg slouched in.

  "Greg," she said, disapproval in her voice. "I thought I told you to wait in my quarters until I came for you."

  He frowned down at her. "I'm not a kid. I can find my way around."

  Kama just lifted an eyebrow and shook her head before she stepped past him. "I'm off. Keep an eye on your uncle. No elephant safaris or sightseeing tours. He's to stay in bed until the medic says otherwise."

  The door closed behind her, and the room seemed to chill. Why had he shared his tale with her when he'd never told it to anyone before? He hardly knew her. But he felt a
strange relief all the same.

  Greg stood uncomfortably just inside the room, and an awkward silence grew. Rafe watched him twiddle a scrap of discarded medical supply wrapper between his fingers and gaze around at the half-empty cupboards like they were great works of art.

  "If your mother ever finds out what you did, she'll skin us both."

  Pink flooded into Greg's face. "Mr. Goldman wouldn't send a shuttle. I had no choice."

  "Ah."

  He'd forgotten Greg as a toddler, could hardly believe he'd grown into this gangly young man. Unconditional love seemed an unbearable burden. He remembered Kama's apology for betraying his identity to the miners. He hoped he had her fortitude and grace while he made his own.

  "Look, I'm sorry for last night. I shouldn’t have lied about taking you on as an assistant, and I should have thanked you for your show of concern."

  Greg eased toward the bed, hope kindling in his eyes. "If you'd just give me a chance, I could be an ace helper."

  "I'm sorry. I can't."

  The hope snuffed out. "Then I'm screwed. I need an internship to finish my management coursework. Mom's gonna kill me."

  "Mr. Goldman will take you back. Your grandfather can intercede on your behalf if necessary."

  Greg turned a jaundiced eye on him. "Gramps doesn't like me that much. And Goldman won't take me back no matter what. When he wouldn't send anyone to help you, I said some things to him that I probably shouldn't have."

  "Ah."

  Worse and worse. It was because of him that Greg was in this hole. Family or no, the kid deserved his help. He'd do it just this once, but then he intended to retreat to Earth and keep his family at arm's length as he had before. He wouldn't risk more.

  "I have some contacts at Wandermere Consortium. Are you familiar with it?"

  "Well, yeah!" said Greg. "Wandermere is EcoMech's biggest customer."

  "I can't promise anything, but I'll see if I can get you an internship there."

  "Thanks, Uncle Rafe. If there's anything I can do for you, just say the word. I mean, while we're stuck here, that is."

  Kama returned, carrying a tray of… something, and placed it on his lap. The label on a little foil block said 'Prepackaged Protein Substitute.' A half-full coffee cup sat beside it. He tore back the cover on the block. Greasy eggs, limp hash browns, and something red and unidentifiable he wasn't going near. He shuddered and took a swallow of coffee. It tasted like pond water. He forked up some bland mash and fought to avoid spitting it out.