Orbital Claims Adjuster: Adventures of a Jump Space Accountant Book 2

by Andrew Moriarty

“They said that was all they had.”

  “Yes, well. I think it’s a ploy. Suzanne?”

  “Yes, Jake?” Suzanne said. Either Zeke or Suzanne accompanied Jake and Vidal on these buying trips. Jake could probably have done it by himself, but Vidal still had a few issues with Jake being alone.

  “Ask Zeke to go to the cargo office and collect all the GG credits in the office? It’s in one of the lockers.”

  “You just leave the credits laying around, Stewart?” Vidal asked.

  “We have a ship stuffed with platinum bars. Who’s going to steal company house credits?”

  Vidal didn’t say anything, which Jake was learning to take as approval.

  They arrived at the airlock, and Zeke took the bag of PGMs from Vidal. At this more sophisticated station, they seemed much more relaxed about the transfer.

  “They must be more trusting,” Suzanne had said.

  “Or they have a high-powered laser sighted on our bridge and ready to fire at any time,” said Jake.

  “Or that.”

  Jake swapped his bag for the GG credits and handed some to Suzanne, Zeke, and Vidal.

  “What’s your plan, Stewart?” Vidal asked.

  “Just follow my lead,” Jake said and stepped back out of the airlock.

  The station had a guard there.

  “We want to go for a drink,” Jake said to the guard. “Get off the ship and walk around for a while.”

  “No problem,” replied the guard. “But if you start a fight, it will go badly for you.”

  “No problems. We just need a break.”

  Jake took the directions to the bar, which, as he predicted, was not far from the base of the truss.

  “They don’t want strangers going too far into the station,” he said as they walked down the corridor.

  The bar had beer taps down one side, stand-up tables around the others, and a few metal tables with metal chairs bolted down in the back. Jake walked up to the bartender.

  “We’d like four beers and four super potato specials. How much will that be in GG credits?”

  “Do you have glasses and cutlery?” the bartender asked.

  “Not with us,” Jake said, exaggerating his accent slightly.

  The bartender nodded. “Eighteen credits all in, then.”

  Jake handed him a twenty-credit chip and let him keep the extra as a tip.

  “Thanks. What are you folks here for?”

  “This and that. Buying and selling.”

  “What are you buying and selling?”

  “We’re looking for metals. We have a few things to sell, but mostly we’re buying. Know anybody with platinum? Or rhodium and ruthenium?”

  “Not off hand. But who knows who might pass through.”

  “Who does, indeed. We’ll take that table over there?”

  “Surely. I’ll bring the beers over.”

  The group walked to the table. Suzanne sat with her back to the wall. Jake sat beside her, while Zeke and Vidal sat in front of them. Suzanne kept her gun hand clear. She looked very alert, and was scanning the room from side to side. Where had she learned that? Vidal? Jake didn’t want to think about that, so he tried to focus back on the task at hand. She had begun to treat Jake as a confusing combination of school teacher and potential boyfriend. When she had technical questions, she asked him and quizzed him quite seriously, but outside of that she kept up a low level of flirting that drove Jake insane

  The waitress arrived shortly after they sat, and Jake had nearly the same conversation with her as the bartender, but she was more direct. “Wait here. I’ll send some friends.”

  Jake nodded. The bartender was making and taking calls on a hardphone between pouring drinks. People were starting to arrive in the bar and sit together, and they stared at the three Petrel crewmembers. They muttered to each other, and on some secret signal, one older man sauntered over and pulled up an empty chair between Zeke and Vidal.

  “I’m Helmut.”

  “Jake.”

  “I hear you want to buy metal?”

  “Yes. I have GG credits.”

  “I hear you paid a pretty penny to the station office.”

  “We traded a pretty penny. Credit deals are for less. You know that.”

  “How much less?”

  “I’ll pay five hundred a kilogram for platinum or palladium, seven-fifty for iridium, and a thousand for the Rs.”

  “That’s way less than you paid at the office.”

  “That was a bulk transaction. It was refined and packaged, and we didn’t pay credit. We traded. That’s what we pay. You want to do a deal or not?”

  Helmut reached into a pocket and Suzanne sat forward, reaching for her weapon. She didn’t relax unit Helmut produced an ingot from his pocket. He hadn’t noticed Suzanne’s movement.

  “500G of mixed. Twenty-five percent silver, twenty-five percent iridium, and the rest is the Rs.”

  Jake took a small kit out of his pocket. He weighted the bar and used a laser to find its volume, then he shined a bright light on it and reflected it to a sensor.

  “Not quite, but close. I’ll give you a hundred for it.”

  “Four hundred.”

  “One twenty.”

  They bickered back and forth for a minute but soon settled on a price. The man was pleased, and Jake could tell he had overpaid. He made a mental note to adjust his bids accordingly with the next taker. For the next hour, a constant stream of arrivals came to the table. Jake bought almost ten kilograms of various mixed metals.

  Eventually Vidal stood up. “Stewart, you seem to be doing an adequate enough job. I’ve got to supervise an engineering refit on the winches. I’ll want a full report, with amounts and credit values. No cheating me or I’ll find out.”

  “Of course not, sir,” said Jake.

  “LaFleur, you’re with me,” Vidal said, nodding his head at Zeke. Zeke stood and gave Jake a wink as he walked after Vidal.

  Jake looked over at Suzanne, who was signaling to the bartender for another round. Finally, they were alone together but Jake couldn’t find anything to say.

  “Jake, you are a strange one,” she said, after a few quiet moments.

  “How so?”

  “You are worried that Bassi would know if you cheated, are you not?”

  “Yes.”

  “But of course, he will not. You have been buying and selling and trading for an hour. Does he know how much you have bought or sold? He does not. You bought some gold. You sold gold. You traded gold for silver. Why did you do that?”

  “Gold bars are too big for regular expenses, but silver is fine. They were in five gram bars, perfect for locals to buy and sell. I knew I could get rid of them more easily. And when I want to buy small amounts of ore, silver will be better.”

  “See? You knew that. He did not. You can pocket half of what we have here and nobody will ever know.”

  “I wouldn’t do that.”

  “No. No you would not. We know that. He is not worried. He wants to make you worry.”

  The waitress dropped the new beers off. “Shift change in thirty minutes. You should stay. My sister will be coming on shift. She’d like to talk to you.”

  Jake and Suzanne settled in. Jake scanned the bar. He noticed it was much fuller than when they arrived. They had injected a lot of new currency into this station’s economy, and people were spending it.

  Jake bought and sold, sold and bought. His pile of PGMs grew relative to his other metals, and he retained small amounts of credits and other currency.

  Jake had just bought ten grams of metal off a boy who looked about seven, when Suzanne sat up straight and gripped his arm with her left hand. Her right snapped to her holster.

  “Jake, we have a problem.”

  “How so?”

  “That man at the far table, with the toolbelt. He and a friend have been here for an hour, watching us and drinking slowly. That package—I just got a glimpse, another man came in and gave it to them. He just gave each of
them a knife, which they hid down their pants. The other went outside. I can see him waiting in the corridor.”

  “Knives? Are you sure?”

  Suzanne surveyed the bar and the entrance. “Jake, we are in danger. We need to move, and we need to move quickly. Rush past the first one, bash the second one, and run for the ship.”

  “How are we in danger? What is going to happen?”

  “We will take them by surprise.”

  “Surprise? They have knives. Suzanne what are you talking about?”

  “Jake,” Suzanne said. She paused for a moment and collected herself. She removed her hand from his arm, but gently turned his face towards her. “Jake, mon ami, please. Do as I ask. As a favor to me.” She grinned at him. The grin was like kryptonite to Jake. He started packing the metals and currency into his satchel.

  “They will try to get us out of the bar to ambush,” Suzanne said.

  “Suzanne, where did you learn about knives and ambushes?”

  She ignored the question. “Jake, you know stations. They want somewhere narrow and quiet where we cannot run away, where would that be?”

  “They won’t attack in the loading dock. That’s too likely to be monitored. But the corridors from there to there probably don’t have cameras or anything.”

  “Yes, I agree. We need a diversion here in the bar, then you charge the small one there and run out the door. I will take care of the other while you make your way to the ship.”

  Jake looked at her in surprise. “I can’t just leave you behind.”

  “Do not worry, Jake,” Suzanne said, smiling. Jake had seen the same smile on Zeke when he did something crazy. “I will be fine. I will be right behind you.”

  Jake finished packing things up into his carry satchel, and into the various pockets he had on his suit. The expensive metals—the rhodium and ruthenium went into an internal, sealed, zippered pocket. The cheaper stuff, including a double handful of copper slugs that he had taken in trade, went into an outer pocket with a simple velcro patch.

  “Now we need a diversion,” Suzanne said.

  “That I can help with,” Jake said. He waved the waitress over.

  “I would like to buy a beer for everybody in the bar to say thank you. You folks can set them all up and announce it. Here’s…fifty credits. That should be enough for the beers and something for you as well.”

  “It sure is. Thanks mister. Free trades.” She hustled back behind the bar and spoke to the bartender. He nodded and began to fill a tray of the smallest glasses with the cheapest beer. He filled two large trays before standing on the bar, right beside the men with knives.

  “A round of BB courtesy of the gentleman in the corner! Free trades! Stay put, Lai will bring it out.”

  “Free trades!” The room erupted in cheering and many people stood up and saluted Jake with their existing drinks. Jake stood, nodded and raised his glass at the crowd in general. He put hand on Suzanne’s shoulder and bent down to talk to her.

  “Don’t get up yet, but be ready to move,” he said.

  Suzanne nodded. She slid to the edge of her chair and poised to run.

  Jake stepped up on his chair. The waitress had just about finished serving everybody. There were twice as many beer glasses on tables as there had been a minute ago. The room quieted as he got up.

  “Thank you, everyone.” Jake removed his hand from a pocket on his suit. It was full of small silver coins. He began to pour them from hand to hand where everybody could see them. It was a big handful, there were lots of coins, and they gleamed in the low light.

  “Thanks to everybody. Free trades!”

  “Free trades,” the crowd shouted.

  “And, as is traditional - Lucky strikes to everybody” Jake yelled, and threw the handful of coins out into the crowd.

  The room went wild. Coins rained out over the room, landing on tables, the floor, splashing in glasses, sticking to clothes. Jake had aimed the bulk of them towards where the knife man was sitting.

  The crowd rushed the corner where he sat, forming a pushing, shoving mass as they scrabbled for the coins. Inevitably some beer was spilled and people got pushed around. Some pushed back and a few minor tussles erupted, adding to the confusion.

  Jake jumped down and dashed across the room, past the bemused bartender toward the door. He banged into one of the men on the way, knocking him into a table of people. Then he skidded towards the door. Suzanne boomed past and bounced off the far wall before correcting herself and turning right down the hallway.

  Someone pushed into Jake and he nearly tripped, but he righted his step and took off through the door. He swung easily around the corner and pivoted down the hallway. He pounded down the corridor, bouncing from floor to ceiling and back, racing for a T-junction and a closed airlock ahead of him.

  A man in coveralls with a toolbelt came around the corner. Jake realized he didn’t know what their opponents looked like. Suzanne did, because she whooped and dove for the man. She drove headfirst into his shoulder. He went down, and she flipped over him and managed to hit the locking wheel feet first. She had become much better in low-G. Suzanne bounced back up onto her feet, and rolled around the corner and down the corridor. She looked a little worse for wear, bouncing from one side to another in a sort of shambling run. Some of her hair had come loose from her ponytail.

  “Jake, I think if we take this corridor anti-spin ward and take the next spar rimward, we’ll come to the outer ring, and we can run back to the ship that way,” she yelled.

  “You’re right, Let’s go.”

  They ran forward. Jake steadied Suzanne so she wouldn’t pinball off the walls, and slowed them down to a steady high speed shuffle. They kept moving down the corridor for a minute. The Petrel shouldn’t be too far away now, but why was the corridor so empty?

  “Suzanne, something’s wrong.” There should have been another spar by now. One is missing.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, we should go back the way we came, and meet l’ami with the knife?”

  “Good point. That way,” Jake said. He pointed forward.

  They kept moving, but more slowly. Jake stopped.

  “Suzanne, where is everybody?”

  “What do you mean?” Suzanne asked.

  “This is a working station. There should be people here. Where are they?”

  “Busy working?”

  “There should be more and more people as we get closer to the docks. But this area looks deserted.”

  They heard voices behind them. At least two, maybe more. Suzanne spun around and raised her eyebrows at Jake. Two men appeared in the distance. They were brandishing shiny things that from a distance looked an awful lot like blades.

  Jake spied a truss with a set of stairs ahead of them.

  “Down the truss stairs,” Jake ordered. They began to descend.

  Jake heard a shout ahead of them.

  Like all stations, this one provided the feeling of gravity by spinning. When you walked “around” a level, you were actually being pushed into the floor by the spin. It was like spinning a hula hoop and walking on the inside edge. When you moved within a spinning ring from the hub to the rim, you either climbed up to the hub or down to the rim via either a ladder or stairs.

  This truss had stairs. Suzanne and Jake clattered down them, bouncing a bit in the low gravity. They could hear the group behind them, gaining on them. Suzanne stopped and mounted the railing.

  “Bien, Jake. It will be faster if we just drop. We can catch one of the railings at a lower level. The gravity is not large.”

  “No!” Jake reached out and yanked Suzanne back. “Gravity gets stronger as we get farther away from the hub. If you drop off the edge, you’ll go slow at first but then faster and faster the farther out you get. Soon you’ll be going too fast to stop yourself.”

  “Really?” Suzanne said, getting down from the railing.

  “Yes, come on. We need to keep going.”
They clattered down the stairs. As Jake had predicted, the gravity got stronger. They ran down to the bottom. Suzanne stopped and drew her gun. Jake stopped as well. This was not a regular docking truss. It was a dead end. There were no connecting tubes or rings. It ended in two airlocks: one for cargo, one for people.

  “Jake, what happens now?” Suzanne said.

  “Not sure.”

  “You should try the comm,” Suzanne offered.

  He spoke into it, frowned, keyed it again, and spoke louder.

  “Why are they not answering,” Suzanne said.

  “I’m not surprised. We’re too far inside and there is too much metal around us for direct connections. We’ve been using repeaters.”

  “So, they have hacked into the repeaters?”

  Jake shook his head. “It’s their equipment. They would have a friend in the station who would turn it off for them or for the ship. That’s what I would do.”

  A voice yelled from above.

  “Hey traders. We just want the gold and platinum. Toss it up and we’ll leave you alone.”

  A head appeared around the top of the stairs. Suzanne aimed carefully and shot at him. She was rewarded by a pinging sound and a poof of dust as the bullet spent itself on the stairs. The head disappeared.

  “No need to be like that,” the voice said. “If you’re reasonable, so will we. We’ll just take what we want and be on our way. No hard feelings.”

  “They’ll take our money, our suits, and then push us out the nearest airlock,” Jake said.

  “If you come down here, I will shoot you,” Suzanne yelled up the stairs and fired again. She flipped the cylinder of her revolver out and began pulling bullets out.

  “With ship bullets? “That might hurt but we can take it.”

  “Can you take this?” Suzanne asked, then aimed and pulled the trigger. This time there was a pinging sound, and Jake heard the bullet ricochet off a girder.

  “Solids,” the voice said. “Well played. But you’re not the only one with a real weapon.” There was a ratcheting sound that Jake associated with a shotgun. “And you only have six shots in that beast, and there are four of us. And Sanjay is pretty pissed at you for slamming him into that lock, so he is going to collect some mining shields. If we have to go hard, it will go hard for you.”