by J. S. Morin
Planet Hustlers
Mission 15 of the Black Ocean Series
J.S. Morin
Planet Hustlers
Mission 15 of: Black Ocean
Copyright © 2017 Magical Scrivener Press
The air may have smelled oddly of ammonia and the sun in the sky shone brilliant blue, but with a cold beer in his hand and a lounge chair supporting his body, Carl imagined he was on a white sandy beach on some primitive Earth-like.
Roddy had jacked up the output on a datapad’s speakers and had it playing steel drum music. Amy, Yomin, and Esper were tossing around a hover disk. Archie had opted to stay on the Mobius and skip the fun. Cedric was off taking care of the business that made this little vacation possible.
Carl checked his own datapad, noting the time relative to Earth Standard. 11:58 PM. He scrambled upright in his chair. “Hey, two minutes to midnight.”
Yomin tucked the hover disk under one arm after catching Amy’s throw. “Really, this is just an excuse for you to switch up your booze for the night.”
“Hey, Earth girl like you oughta appreciate carbonated wine,” Roddy said with a snicker, popping their makeshift cooler and passing out bottles of the cheapest champagne Ruulon IV had on their last stop.
“As an Earth girl, I resent that. I’m from New Orleans, honey. We invented inventing reasons to drink.”
Bottles popped. Plastic corks flew. Sudsy fountains spurted.
“One minute,” Carl announced.
“Cedric, come on. Get over here,” Esper chided.
The younger Brown left the strange magical anomaly that was providing their breathable atmosphere unattended. “Very well. I must say, as a traditionalist, this is a paltry celebration.”
“Stow it, Oxford,” Yomin chided. “We ain’t got a fancy pub and a hundred tipsy undergrads.”
“Shoni!” Roddy called out. “You’re going to miss it!”
Shoni emerged from the Mobius with a stretch and a yawn. “There is no celestial confluence that differentiates the difference in year between—”
“Ten… nine… eight…” Carl counted at a shout, drowning out the killjoy laaku scientist. So what if her planet’s calendar didn’t line up.
“Three… two… one… Happy New Year!” Carl shouted to a chorus of cheers, some more enthusiastic than others. He tipped back his champagne bottle and chugged.
God, this stuff was awful. It was the chintziest, fakest, worst-tasting alcohol imaginable. It was the equivalent of eating a cheese wheel with the wax coating still on it. It was colored, bubbly toilet water. And this was coming from a guy who enjoyed Earth’s Preferred.
Esper burst into a rendition of “Auld Lang Syne” until she discovered she was singing alone. Most of the crew discovered more or less the same thing as Carl had about the flavor and switched back to their original beverages of choice.
Roddy, trying to act like he was tidying up, collected the discarded bottles.
“So,” Esper said. “It’s a new year. What’s everyone planning for their 2562 new year’s resolutions?”
“Guess my old standby of ‘get the fuck off this primitive moon’ gets the old checkbox and a retirement party,” Yomin said. “Maybe something in the range of a payday worth a six-month vacation to Titan. There’s a massage parlor there that I could happily die in.”
“A life outside the convocation,” Cedric grumbled.
“Same as every year,” Roddy said, pausing to tilt back a bottle. “Give up drinkin’. Will be next year, too.”
Carl didn’t want to answer. Anything he resolved always came back to bite him in the ass. Instead, he turned the question back on Esper. “How about you?”
Esper appeared distracted. Her eyes kept tracking something out of sight to the rest of them: Mort. Everyone knew now that he was there. Esper wasn’t as constantly badgered as before, but he still gave her fits now and then, especially when it had been a while since the last bowling night. She huffed a sigh. “Someone wants it to be known that he’ll find a way to reconstruct his old body this year. As for me, to stop Mort.”
There was a chorus of laughs at Mort’s expense. They’d all pay for it on league night at the Esperville bowling alley, but it was worth it.
Carl’s datapad chimed and not the kind that reminded him he was forgetting something fun.
“Aw, fer Chrissakes,” Roddy muttered. “Smother that thing.”
Carl shook his head. “Not this time.” His voice was somber. “It’s New Garrelon, trying to get a hold of Rai Kub. He wasn’t answering his line, so they contacted me.”
Esper nodded. “Fine. I’ll get him. This is something worth breaking a fast over.”
# # #
Rai Kub opened his eyes a squint. Maybe the knock had been his imagination. Everyone knew he was meditating. The beginning of a new year was an opportunity for renewal, for changing ways and mending fences, for reconnecting with the soul of the universe. It didn’t matter that the date had shifted when the humans had come to Garrelon so long ago. New Year’s Day wasn’t a celestial event; it was a metaphysical one.
The knock repeated.
Rai Kub squeezed his eyes shut. He had no wish to imbibe in the human tradition. They looked forward with reluctance and drank to erase the prior year. Rai Kub pitied them that empty philosophy—but only to a point. Their species had conquered his homeworld, after all.
The knocking grew louder. Carl’s voice carried through the door. “OK, big guy. I was trying to be polite about this—you praying or shit in there. But answer your damn comm. The bigger big guys on New Garrelon wanna talk to you in the worst way, and I don’t think it’s to wish their off-world citizens a happy new year.”
Floor groaning beneath his bulk, Rai Kub climbed to his feet and answered the door. “They do?”
Carl’s head tilted. “No. I just bruised my fucking hand knocking on your door as a prank. My new year’s resolution. Of course, they do. What I wanna know is what they want you for that they wouldn’t tell Savior Carl.”
“I… have no idea.”
Carl jabbed a finger that aimed at the datapad on the floor of Rai Kub’s quarters. “Then look!”
Rai Kub turned. From the corner of his eye, he saw Carl move to follow. A flick of his wrist sent the steel door slamming shut in the captain’s face. If Tuu Nau didn’t want Carl overhearing, neither did Rai Kub.
Messages, messages, messages.
The New Garrelon High Council had been trying to get in touch with him for over an hour. Everything sounded urgent. So many capital letters. So many exclamation points.
Urgent! NEED to speak NOW!!
YOUR people NEED YOU!!!
Answer IMMEDIATELY! DO NOT WAIT!
It went on and on with no explanation. Each had a contact comm ID that Rai Kub didn’t recognize. Steeling himself with a long breath, he punched it in and waited.
There was a response in seconds. “Rai Kub?” It was Tuu Nau.
“Yes. I was meditating on the new year. Savior Carl alerted me.”
“We’ve been invaded!”
Rai Kub’s brain shut off. Was he receiving a message from a past life? Was this a dream brought on my meditation? He could imagine such a message before he was born, broadcast to anyone who would listen, on the day that humans arrived on Old Garrelon.
“Do you hear me? We’ve been invaded!”
“I don’t understand.”
“A fleet showed up. The Clapton was no match for them. They said we won’t be harmed, but the planet is under their control now.”
“Are you all right? Where are you now? Are… are you looking for us to sneak in and rescue you?”
Rai Kub wracked his brain. This was a matter for the omni news feeds, not a secretive message to a smuggler ship. P
lanetary invasions—and their reversal—weren’t on Carl’s list of approved commercial ventures. They had a few guns and a small ship. Even the Clapton had only been taken through extensive planning and great loss. Anything that could chase that ship off was a matter for a galactic navy.
ARGO wouldn’t help the stuunji. They were the original oppressors. Perhaps with a mutual enemy, the Eyndar could be persuaded to intervene. Rai Kub was no political scientist, but the “enemy of my enemy” line sometimes worked out.
“No. I need you to convince Savior Carl to negotiate.”
“But, you commed Carl and told him to find me. Why not address him directly?”
“Rai Kub, as the duly appointed representative of the New Garrelon Exiles Government, I hereby charge you with ensuring the cooperation of Savior Carl in what may well be a hopeless effort. Nonetheless, we have no choice.”
Rai Kub cleared his throat. “I hesitate to even mention this, High Councilor. But… you are aware that Savior Carl is a criminal, not a diplomat. Why him?”
“We weren’t invaded by a government. We were invaded by pirates. These are his kind of people. We need someone who speaks their language. We need a con man.”
# # #
Carl tried not to eavesdrop. For all of ten seconds, he followed his shiny new year’s resolution to play it straight with his crew and not deal behind their backs. Instead, as he heard the comm wrap up, Carl was scurrying back to the couch as quietly as he could.
Lucky for him, he already had a beer.
He was taking a sip as Rai Kub exited his quarters and made his way into the common room. “Carl. We need to talk.”
“The big horns back home have some kind of dire hay shortage we need to solve or something?” In truth, he’d missed bits and pieces from the New Garrelon side of the conversation. Rai Kub’s voice resonated through the ship’s hull like a torpedo hit. The tinny speakers on his datapad had trouble making it through the thick doors.
“We have lost New Garrelon.”
Carl Who Had No Idea What Was Coming choked on his beer. “What? How? We gave them a fucking cruiser. State of the art. Unless you mean some weird magic things happened and the planet is actually missing.”
“No. The former,” Rai Kub confirmed, hanging his head. “The Clapton withdrew in the face of hopeless odds.”
The crew filtered back into the Mobius.
“Hey. We missed you planetside,” Roddy said. He was carrying two of the champagne bottles. “You left in an awful hurry. Anything urgent?”
“The stuunji got conquered,” Carl explained.
Roddy shook his head. “Again? Have you people ever considered, you know, joining a military alliance or something?” He tipped back one of the bottles.
Rai Kub sighed. “We have not.”
The door opened, and Esper entered, Cedric following close behind. “Everything all right in here? Party started collapsing awfully quick.”
Roddy cleared his throat. “The esteemed stuunji government learned defensive military preparations from Carl’s love life.”
“Hey!” Carl snapped.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Esper asked.
Roddy chuckled. “Don’t learn from their mistakes. They got themselves conquered on their exile planet.”
“It’s not amusing,” Rai Kub pointed out sternly.
Champagne bottle flailing, Roddy waved a placating hand, still amused at his own joke. “I get it. I get it. But from this perspective—”
The cargo bay door opened. “What’s the gag? You guys move the party up here?”
Esper drew Yomin into a conciliatory hug. “No. Rai Kub’s planet got taken over.”
Yomin gave Esper a tentative pat on the back despite a puzzled frown. “But… how? It’s a demilitarized zone. The stuunji picked that planet because none of the major galactic powers are allowed to bring a force large enough to conquer anything.”
“It wasn’t a government,” Rai Kub said. “It was the Poet Fleet.”
Carl’s jaw dropped. Chuck Ramsey had delusions of grandeur that included having the kind of roving criminal empire those pirates had put together. But if Chuck had plans for taking over the EADZ and muscling out the lesser operators in the region, he had just gotten beaten to the punch.
“But why?” Carl asked. “That doesn’t make sense. No offense, big guy, but your planet’s farmland and wildlife preserves. Carousel was a mineral gold mine. Well, not actual gold. I think. Maybe there’s some of that, too. But mostly it’s mines and factories. Not pretty but lucrative.”
“They did seem like pirates who might appreciate natural beauty,” Esper suggested.
The door opened again. Amy and Shoni came in, hauling a cooler between them. “Thanks for leaving us to clean up out there. We crashing for the night already? Or did we just bring the party indoors?” Amy asked.
“The Poet Fleet conquered New Garrelon,” Yomin said.
Shoni glanced up at Amy, who merely shrugged. “The who?”
# # #
The crew gathered in the common room. As soon as Amy was back from setting their course to New Garrelon, Carl sat down and explained things for the newcomers’ benefit.
“It wasn’t too long ago, we ran into the Poet Fleet at Freeride,” Carl began, skipping over the minor detail of why.
“Feels like a lifetime ago,” Esper muttered.
“We got caught up in the middle of a political power struggle. An offshoot of the Rucker family was muscling in on the planet, and the Poet Fleet wanted them gone. They took Esper hostage, and—”
Yomin snorted. “Oh, that must have been fun.”
“I wasn’t really a wizard in those days,” Esper said with a soft sigh. “Or at least, not much of one.”
“Anyway,” Carl continued after the interruption. “We did some bargaining and some bartering, some finagling and a little—”
“We screwed over Tanny’s cousin, blamed the Poet Fleet for everything, and rescued Esper,” Roddy summarized.
Carl cast him a glare. “Anyone ever told you you’re a shitty storyteller?”
“Could ask you the same,” Roddy shot back. “The point here isn’t the glorious tale of how we hoodwinked a bunch of snooty, tea-sipping, Shakespeare-quoting scalawags. The moral of the story is that we stabbed these pirates in the back not all that long ago, and they’d have to be lobotomized to have forgotten about it by now.”
“What?” Carl said, spreading his hands. “So we made it look like the Poets went back on a deal. Some bankers back in Sol lost money on a deal. If anyone can take a joke, it’s a crew dressed in motley.”
“Great,” Roddy grumbled. “Now I’ll have Mötley Crüe stuck in my head all night.”
“Carl…” Esper said gently. “I’m not usually the one to point this out, but… have you considered that this might be a trap?”
Carl laughed out loud and tossed back the rest of his beer before answering. “You know… for a wizard, you can still be so damn naive at times. Kind of adorable in a ‘you’re mentally ten times my age’ sort of way. If the Poets wanted me dead, we’d be swatting at bounty hunters like mosquitoes at a Bayou picnic.”
Yomin cast Carl a glare. “Leave the Cajun metaphors to the natives, cher.”
Roddy ambled over and tossed his champagne bottle into the waste reclaim as he grabbed himself a beer. “Let’s just deal in the facts as we know ‘em. Poet Fleet’s occupying New Garrelon. Government is on lockdown planetside but not arrested or executed. Maybe if we work out a deal, this can be the security arrangement the stuunji need.”
Amy snorted. “Spoken like a laaku.”
“What’s that supposed to mean,” Shoni jumped in. “I never knew you were—”
Roddy jumped in. “Easy there. No one’s using the X word. We’re all friends here. I’m sure Amy just meant—”
“That the laaku caved the instant a human battleship showed up.”
Roddy deflated. “OK, maybe she is a little xenoist.”
> Carl tipped his chair back and sipped his beer. “Facts are facts. The laaku people weren’t going to fight off Earth Navy when our people met. You guys cut a deal that worked out for everyone. The Poet Fleet is no Earth Navy, but to the stuunji they might as well be. I mean, Phabian had a hundred times the population and a lot more industry. You could have fought back.” He turned to Rai Kub. “What would your people think of an alliance, if I can hash that sort of thing out?”
“We could have done that the first time,” Rai Kub pointed out.
Roddy raised a finger. “I’d like to refer back to that whole ‘learning from their mistakes’ point I was making earlier. If you people don’t want to keep getting conquered, you’re going to need some firepower. I mean, it might be generations before it’s anything more than a protection racket, but over time… Well, let’s just say that I can see a future where some philosophically minded pirates follow those timeworn old stuunji traditions, and the stuunji become the galaxy’s pre-eminent mercenary soldiers.”
Rai Kub put a hand up to cover his mouth, aghast. “That would be awful.”
Roddy rolled his eyes. “Four hundred kilos of muscle, and you’d think I was suggesting ballet as his people’s salvation.”
The door to Archie and Yomin’s quarters opened. “I’m now fully charged. I can see by the astral space out the window that we are no longer on our little partially terraformed hideaway. What have I missed?”
Roddy took point on getting the robot up to speed. “New Garrelon got invaded by pirates. Rai Kub has been charged with breaking every bone in Carl’s body if he won’t help sort it out. Esper thinks it’s a trap. Amy’s a closet xenoist. Shoni is easily offended. Cedric is trying to blend into the paint job and avoiding comment. I’m the voice of reason who thinks that maybe the stuunji could use some pirates watching their backs.”
Carl raised a finger. “And I’m firmly in the camp of not getting every bone in my body broken.”
Archie looked around the common room, sparing a moment to fix his glowing robotic gaze on each of them in turn. “You’re all bonkers. Listen to the pink-hooded she-wizard. Dealing with pirates is bad business. Whether or not it’s a trap specifically for you, or whether it was intended as a trap at all, it’ll turn into one the instant you poke your noses where they don’t belong. Mark my words: there will be blood.”