Set'em Up

by A N G Reynolds

  “Which bunk do you want, Ariadne?” I asked as I started toward the ship. The princess looked from me to the ship for a few brief seconds.

  “It’s your mission, you can pick the bunk,” Ariadne smiled genuinely.

  I picked the bunk to the right coming in the compartment door. It gave me a good vantage point to the ship’s main hatch.

  Four

  I slept nearly the entire boring process of hiring a Boot and putting our bid in the Sling. In fact, I didn’t wake up until Ariadne slapped my face, telling me to buckle up, the Boot had arrived.

  I groggily made my way to the copilot’s chair and fumbled with the straps until Ariadne had to reach over and help me. I scowled in her general direction but kept my mouth shut as she coordinated things with the Boot operator and waved goodbye to her brother and his girl. I waved too, but I knew they couldn’t see us through the semi-opaque membrane of the cockpit. In space, the membrane would lift to reveal a delicate and transparent window, but in-atmosphere the risk of damage to it by fine particles and moisture was great enough that the eyelid stayed shut.

  My stomach did a single flop as the Boot lifted the ship. To be honest, I have no idea why they are called Boots. The big, 75-feet tall, insect-like walkers hardly looked like a boot, but that’s how everyone knows them.

  The good news about the Lilstar’s small size was that the Boot could just walk over us and lift us straight off the ground. I had seen pictures of a thousand Boots lifting up a single, massive luxury liner, the U.C.S. Excelsior. Crawling at a snail’s pace, those first Boots had to be beyond tough, inching their way underneath the ship to lift it enough for another row of Boots to crawl underneath. The process was repeated over a few days until every row of Boots was under the ship, lifting it only a few dozen feet into the air. It was like watching ants carry a cucumber as they slowly made it to the only Sling on Earth that could cope with the ship’s enormous size.

  Unfortunately, the whole launch ended in disaster when it turned out that the Sling couldn’t take the weight of the Excelsior and one of the town-sized springs burst, tearing an unfixable hole into the side of it. Within moments the Excelsior was completely dead. The carcass of the ship would take millennia to rot out and could still be smelled across the entire planet. The Sling was a total waste with all hard metal components corroded or warped beyond repair. So the site sat, rotting away, with clean-up being way more expensive than letting nature take its course. Some advocates called for the whole thing to be burned to the ground, shaving decades off the natural processes at work. Unfortunately, that would require a fire large enough to create a continent-spanning ash cloud that would carry all sorts of rotting smells and toxic fumes for hundreds if not thousands of miles. The best option was just to wait out however long it would take for the ship to disintegrate and then try to salvage whatever could be salvaged from the Sling. It was still unlikely that anything could be done about the Sling itself; all that could be salvaged was the gigantic hole in the dirt in which it sat. At least the liner and the Sling had both been United-Consortium property, meaning that the economy took no great hit, although stock in luxury liners plummeted for a few months after the accident.

  Overall, I had many reasons to be pleased at the Lilstar’s insignificant size.

  For now.

  I waited patiently for the Boot to lift the ship completely in the air, secure it to its underbelly, and begin the moderate walk to the Sling at Aban. It was a quiet but very jostling trip as each of the Boot’s four legs took turns taking one step after the other. The Lilstar swayed slowly with the motions, but remained secure. Although pleasant, I realized how wholly boring this was going to be. I cursed myself slightly for leaving my book and schematics on my bunk. Fortunately, before I knew it, I was dozing peacefully in my chair. Of course, I was still paying some measure of attention to what was going on around me. Like when Ariadne sighed, loudly. I noticed that. I also successfully ignored it until she sighed again.

  “Yes?” I asked.

  “What?” she wondered in what sounded like genuine confusion.

  “You keep sighing,” I said.

  “Oh, yeah probably,” she said. I opened one eye and peeked at her. She was looking at me suspiciously.

  I glared at her with my one eyeball until she finally gave in.

  “What happened?”

  “Use whole sentences.”

  “Fine. What happened to your brother? What did the system do to him?” she finally asked.

  I swallowed painfully before rolling my eye back into my head.

  “Just be glad that the skiptrace I took the license from is no longer in the field,” I finally offered.

  “That’s it?” Ariadne asked. I cursed mentally. Why did she have to ask? I’d be much happier if she didn’t.

  “Basically,” I said.

  “What do you mean by ‘basically’?” she queried further. I contemplated using the fancy shocking device Sasha gave me on her. Of course, if it had any adverse effects on the princess, I would be at a dead-end. I sighed myself.

  “Just fly the ship,” I said.

  “We’re strapped to a Boot,” she said.

  “That’s not what I meant!” I spat slightly.

  “D’oh,” the princess said with a hint of condescension. I glared at her until she began to giggle.

  “What’s so funny?” I demanded.

  “You are genuinely terrifying. And only about five-foot-three,” Ariadne giggled further.

  “For the record I am 5'5", ma’am. I’m sure you are a lot more vertically challenged without those springs you’ve got all over your head,” I spat back, pouting deeper into my chair. The ship seemed to be adjusting it to the way I was sitting.

  “Oh, don’t you mock this,” Ariadne said, gesturing to her near-perfect mane of bouncing curls. To be quite honest, I almost didn’t have the heart to mock it. My own hair was definitely not as lively, nor had it ever been. That had been a problem living with only an older brother; I was a bit behind on hair-care. Once, we even agreed to take me to his barber to cut my hair super-short in an attempt to save some time and effort and keep the snarls at bay. Even though I was capable of some rudimentary styles and was more than adept at keeping it tangle-free, I’d never forgotten about being proud to walk around with a short-but-stillshaggy hairdo that looked like my brother’s.

  “I can if I want to.” I stuck my tongue out at her. She stuck hers out farther than I had, and I moved to slap her jaw. She batted my hand away without much thought and slapped my forehead.

  “Ahh!” I cried, trying to reach over as far as I could while still strapped into my chair. The princess leaned back as far as she could, at first swatting my hands and then dissolving into laughter that was doubling her over.

  I was laughing too; so much so that my ribs began to throb.

  We continued our inane gigglefest until I was in too much pain to continue and Ariadne was wiping tears from her eyes. We tried not to look at each other in fear of bursting into laughter again. I felt better than I had in a very long time. Perhaps the whole being-a-skiptrace with Ariadne thing would be good for me. I’d never really had a job or a friend before. Being out for revenge really puts a damper on both employment and a social life.

  “What’s that?” I suddenly asked, noticing something odd. The ship was still swaying to the Boot’s rhythm, but there was a different motion, one which I could just barely pick up. It seemed to be slowing down.

  Ariadne stopped her laughter cold to look over the ship’s controls. I looked at my own panel; though I was much less skilled than the princess, I saw nothing that appeared to be weird.

  “The ship’s endorphins are slightly elevated; I guess we made her laugh,” Ariadne decided.

  “Ships can do that?” I asked in a tone that hopefully contained more surprise than fear.

  “Some ships,” Ariadne said with an easy shrug. “Smaller ships use the same genetic facsimile base as the larger ones, but since the Over-Code t
hat makes their bodies are smaller, everything is a little more concentrated. Usually a ship has just enough endorphins to take the edge off its pain if it’s injured, but sometimes the smaller ones produce extra.”

  “I knew that,” I said, still a little bewildered. “But I didn’t know ships could laugh.”

  “Only the small ones,” the princess flashed me a grin. “Besides, the Lilstar was a custom job, so her facsimile is a little more refined than most.”

  “Oh,” I ended the conversation. I wasn’t wholly convinced a laughing ship was something useful.

  The rest of the Boot’s trip lasted for nearly ever, compounded by the fact that Ariadne and I had exhausted our conversation for the day. I had also used up as much napping as I had, so my options were either to familiarize myself with the ship’s panels that were in front of me or fiddle with any loose object I could get my hands on. That object happened to be the fancy shock device Sasha had given me. While I understood the biology behind organic ships and buildings, I was no pilot by any stretch of the imagination.

  I messed with it quietly and carefully, trying not to catch Ariadne’s curiosity too much. It’s not that I didn’t want her to see it, it’s that I didn’t feel like explaining what it was, where I had gotten it, and how deep in trouble we would be in if someone caught us with it. Thankfully, the princess was more interested in reviewing her ship for what was probably the fortieth time.

  The device was just big enough that my hand couldn’t hide it fully. It fit into my palm well enough, but it stuck out beyond my thumb and pinkie finger about an inch in each direction. I carefully removed one of its electroshock discs and replaced it. I ran my fingers along the seams until I found the tab to open the semi-secret compartment it had. No great treasure fell out, much to my chagrin, but the compartment did reveal the device’s settings and power level.

  If I was reading it correctly, the power was self-regenerating, although I didn’t know how. The device also had three settings, described accurately with small pictograms indicating what you could incapacitate at each level and how many discs you would have to use at once. The lowest with only one disc had a picture of a mining mite, a foot-long and tick-like creature that could scour and store minerals from almost any inhospitable environment. Aside from blatant thievery of property or raw ores, there really was no reason to stun one of the beasts. With two discs at the lowest setting, you could stun a small, generic dog-like creature—going by the picture, anyway.

  The next setting had a generic picture of a human at the one-disc use and a generic picture of a short-yet-athletic Centauri at the two-disc level. Again, I had no idea why anyone would want to stun a Centauri. It’s not like they were responsible for our war, although they insisted on supplying each side with some pretty high-grade weaponry. Overall, they were a boring species which humans couldn’t really interact with, given the dichotomy between our natural and preferred atmospheres. Trade between our two peoples was an incredible industry for anyone lucky enough to participate, but that was as far as our relationship with our nearest neighbor went. They had the faster-than-light drive needed to cross the great gulf that existed between our two planets, and we had the organic ships they needed to navigate the nebula, done and done.

  The final level had a picture of a Boot at the one-disc slot and a small, Lilstar-sized ship at the two-disc slot. I mused over how much damage the palm-sized device could actually do. It felt more and more like a doomsday weapon the longer I held it. Given its materials, I’d bet it was a Centauri weapon too. They preferred old-school plastics and wiring to the more organic options. Another reason our two species had little contact other than economically.

  Of course, I still thanked Sasha for the device. Ariadne was right, I don’t have the height to pull off intimidating.

  “There’s the Sling!” the princess squealed in a shrill voice. She bounced up and down in her seat as she peered through the still-lidded eye of the ship. I followed suit, pocketing the device, with somewhat less enthusiasm. Of course, I’d used a Sling before, although it wasn’t my own ship. I swallowed, mentally preparing myself for a heck of a ride.

  The Boot carefully set the Lilstar on a conveyor belt some few miles away from the Sling itself. For the moment, the belt was halted, waiting dutifully until the Sling had launched its current ship into the atmosphere.

  The Sling itself looked like little more than a giant, gaping hole in the earth, with three concentric circles inside of it and a trio of tines that stuck up straight into the atmosphere for a few thousand feet. Perfect for three different sizes of ship. The three spires that stuck out were placed equally around the outside of the Sling’s biggest circle, adding some extra height for whatever idiot company would decide it needed to launch a superliner again. These tines could also be fitted with a giant rubber band of sorts to help guide the ships into orbit, kind of like a ginormous slingshot. That was only used when the weather was inclement, however, and today was as calm as a tomb.

  I waited tensely, seeing what little I could through the ship’s eyelid. Since the Sling had a gaping, medium-sized hole in its center, it was preparing to launch a ship at escape velocity. I could just make out the broadcast countdown through the Lilstar’s hull.

  Although it was difficult to make out the loud thump the middlemost springs made as they were released and flung the medium-sized cargo ship into the atmosphere at great speeds, I still winced slightly when it happened. The medium and small concentric circles of the Sling bounced up out of their ground-level frames for a second as if they were trying to follow the ship into space, but settled down in a moment. Portable chocks used to position the ships properly on the Sling’s platform leapt up several hundred feet into the air before crashing down on the empty plain that surrounded the Sling. I watched as one crashed down a few yards from the ship and prayed it wouldn’t bounce or roll and hit the Lilstar’s hull. It didn’t, thankfully.

  The conveyor belt on which the Lilstar rested slowly began to move toward the Sling, giving more than enough time for the crew and machinery to reset the contraption. My stomach churned just a bit. Sure, I had been slung into outer space before, but the idea of being launched forcibly into a vacuum of infinite directions without any sort of initial guidance was still a little unsettling. Plus I could never quite get rid of the whole rotting and mangled superliner image that was stuck in my head.

  The giddiness Ariadne had been sporting since we first touched down in Theopa was replaced by some quiet determination as she began to check all the ship’s systems and prepare for the Sling. I knew if I put on the headphones above me, I could hear both sides of the conversation she was having with the Sling’s control station, but my anxiety-riddled brain wasn’t all that interested in listening to a conversation that I probably wouldn’t understand. Pilots practically had their own language and I doubted not knowing what Ariadne was saying to the Sling operators would help my nerves any.

  The conveyor belt briefly halted just outside the Sling’s largest circle and a troupe of crewmen walked over to the Lilstar to give it a final inspection before launch. I chewed my lip as the ship was doused with a deep violet goo that had two purposes. The first purpose was to check for atmosphere leaks, and the second to check hull integrity. The goo briefly weakened the ship’s hull and the crewmen climbed all over her, taping the sides loudly and jumping up and down on the roof a few times to make sure there weren’t any weak spots. I watched Ariadne wince after a particularly loud blow to the Lilstar’s port flank.

  After the goo was washed off and we waited required 20-minutes for the ship’s hull to regain its strength, the conveyor turned on once again, inching us through the Sling’s outer circle and toward the center of its smallest. Ariadne now kept up a running conversation of repeated “yep” and “roger that” with the control station, and I put on my headphones for the sake of making sure my eardrums didn’t burst with the sound of the springs releasing.

  The Lilstar was slowly aligned and tilte
d nose-up with the help of crewmen, cranes, and a miniature Boot. Before long, I was sitting with my back to gravity, staring up at the clear sky above, waiting to be lowered into the Sling’s smallest hole. As soon as the platform was cleared of men and equipment, the whole contraption began to vibrate, and I could feel the Lilstar sinking into the Sling as gears inched the platform downward against the four springs that rested underneath it.

  I could feel the tension increasing on so much metal and I marveled at how uncomfortable I felt. Nothing like a small ship to remind you what a stupid idea the Slings were. There were so many things that could go wrong. A spring could break. A platform malfunction could bruise the Lilstar or even break its falsebone skeleton. Our launch angle could be off and we would end up belly-flopping some few hundred miles from here. I glanced out the still-covered window at the hole I was now deep inside. I could see the springs for the medium-sized circle easily and remembered how a Sling three times that size had ripped through the ship and platform above it. Even Ariadne was quiet at this point.

  For one tense moment, the ship stopped moving backward, sitting helplessly on top of four springs larger in diameter than the average human’s head. Then, with a loud thump that was felt more than heard, the Sling released the platform and the Lilstar shot upward, into space too quickly for gravity to pull it back down. I tried not to scream aloud as we smoothly sailed through the atmosphere until the whole visible universe was murky brown with nebulous gasses and speckled with only the brightest stars. The nebula that engulfed the solar system was usually comforting to me, like some kind of interstellar blanket, but at the moment, I was too focused on other problems. I’m not certain how many G’s the ship pulled; fewer than the unmanned water-cargo ships for certain, but definitely more than the freighter I had used nearly a year ago. It felt like my brain was being sloshed backwards into my skull and my innards turned to mush.