by Ginger Booth
Ben grinned and sprayed him again. “That won’t work, Cope.” He so rarely caught the engineer in a mistake. He enjoyed it when it came. The wet vac was already full of bleach water. If he hosed out this wall, the little machine had no drain. He gave his ex another quick squirt, then systematically set to power wash the ‘top’ of this exposed compartment. Brownish water poured down the wall into the hold. There was a drain down there, but they’d be mopping this entire wall and half the floor before they were done.
Cope waited until the topmost meter was mostly spray-free. Then he lay on the edge facing starboard and scrubbed the crud the hose didn’t dislodge with bleach. By then Ben had doused Teke and Kassidy with the sprayer, too.
Hunter brought them out sandwiches for lunch. He sat legs dangling from the catwalk to eat with them outside the spray radius. Or rather, he was dry until he started up the great creche debate again. Teke drenched him for a particularly pompous bit of lecture. Kassidy pelted him with a sopping sponge.
Ben had forgotten how much more fun these gross bits were when you rolled up your sleeves and did it together. He leaned sideways to his ex. “Cope. We raise the kids right. Right for us.”
“Rego straight,” Cope agreed gratefully, and bopped fists with him. “But we should probably leave it to once a week, interrupting them by video.”
Ben shrugged, his momentary feeling of solidarity evaporating. “Your call. You know them better.”
Cope surprised him. “No. Your call. You’re the one who’s always out here.”
Ben smiled. “My call, huh? Give them a week, contact them on Glow. Unless Dad says someone needs us.”
The president nodded. “I still need to talk about your processes, captain. Your last engineer knew you’d never pop a panel. I’ll pop ’em all. Count on it. Now back to the slime!”
They groaned and laughed as they took to their feet. Hunter slipped off for a quick shower before his spacewalk lesson. Quire kindly toweled the catwalk floor dry for him before Willow saw it.
“It’s great to have you all back together again,” Ben told the soggy ventilation cleaning team. “I’ve missed you.”
“He says that now,” Cope quipped. “He forgets how ornery we are.”
56
“MO Control, this is Prosper Actual.” Ben hailed Mahina Orbital from the bridge on Dusk. “Requesting transit window.” He closed the channel and explained in an aside to Zan, manning the gunnery console to his right on the bridge. “These new solar arrays beam power to the habitat, and the guns provide near-space interdiction against ring debris. Really unwise to close into MO’s neighborhood without a transit corridor.”
Zan nodded in wonder, his novice eyes drinking in the strange tableau before him. Mahina itself was essentially a big pebble in the rings of Pono, traveling along with the general stream of ice and rocks, ranging from sand grain to moon. Enforcing interdiction against the debris was a necessary challenge. The moon mostly accomplished this with its engineered atmosphere and ground-based gun emplacements. The orbital used immense asteroid guns as well. He flinched as a meteor exploded. Low-power followups obliterated the shards.
“Prosper Actual, MO traffic control. You have a purple beacon and 25 minutes for transit. Confirm timer set.”
“Timer confirmed,” Ben agreed. “Whole lot of mine skiffs in my sky, MO.”
“What can I say, Prosper, it’s nearly sunset,” traffic control returned with a chuckle. “Come get drunk with everyone else.”
“Looking forward to it,” Ben agreed. “Catch me out on the town, Clive, I owe you a beer.”
“You’re on! MO out.”
Zan asked, “No parking assignment?”
Ben brought up the purple beacon path and showed him. Their dock lay at its termination. Except there wasn’t enough room. “MO, Prosper Actual, I have a problem.”
“Prosper, go ahead.”
“I’m dragging two icebergs. One for me, one for you. Insufficient clearance at dock 3B. How do you want to proceed?”
“Ach, you had to make it complicated, huh? Prosper hold position.”
Ben studied the complicated orbital yard that was MO these days. The old pizza box orbital now stuck onto a peanut-shaped asteroid about 100 times its mass. All the docks a PO-3 like Prosper could use were part of that decaying facility. The solar sails that used to stick out of the pizza box like an enormous lace collar were gone. In their place, solar clusters drifted outside the inner core of gun interdiction and beamed their power back. He located the junkyard just beyond the asteroid from his current vector, the region of space used to corral stuff waiting to be recycled.
The controller came back on the channel. “Prosper, I am astonished. Our water tanks are full. Cannot accommodate two icebergs at the docks. You may keep one, and park the bigger in the junkyard. Observe updated purple beacon.”
“Timer says 20 minutes, Clive,” Ben pointed out.
“You have 20 minutes to reach junkyard,” Clive confirmed. “Call back for second transit. MO out.”
Ben shifted to follow the new beam at dead slow. In theory the mine skiffs were notified about his purple path of traffic hazard. In practice, the p-suited boneheads flew like lunatics at best. Now they were headed in for happy hour to commence their three day weekends. What little residual judgment they might possess was flown.
“How many people here now?” Zan asked. He flinched as a skiff zipped by, missing one of their icebergs by less than 30 meters. “And what do you do if they get too close?”
“Around here, 30 meters is a wide margin,” Ben replied. “We can’t do squat. If they commit suicide by ramming our ship, I guess we patch the hole. Maybe 2000 people here, including the out-miners. These clowns. Regular boom town.”
“This is not what I expected from the crew’s stories of the old MO.”
“No,” Ben agreed. “Even before we left for Denali, they were gearing up to retrofit the orbital. With the new radiation meds we brought back from Sagamore with Genevieve Carruthers, it isn’t a death sentence up here anymore.” He paused to slow the ship slightly with thrusters, granting himself a wider berth around a formation of a half dozen mining skiffs crossing his path. He blinked trying to recall what he’d been saying.
“She was the one who gene-engineered you and Cope?” Zan asked. “Made you smarter? With Michael Yang?”
“Yeah,” Ben confirmed gratefully. “So that unleashed some unhappy urbs who came up here for big pay, and get out from under the elderly thumbs of the city directors. Maybe reached 700 people then. But when we got back from Denali with the Yang-Yangs, finally settlers could work up here. And they need Yang-Yangs to do it. Now they have more volunteers than jobs on the orbital. A settler working stiff in some tiny rego town, no other way he can afford Yang-Yangs. Here, they sign up for three years, get full nanites, creche care if they’ve got kids, and get paid. A lot of them never leave. Bunch of Saggies, too, advisors hired on from Hell’s Bells or SO – Sagamore Orbital. And wherever Saggies go, paddies are sure to follow. Regular circus up here.”
Hell’s Bells was Sagamore’s permanent mining and industrial platform in the rings. Utterly unsuited to terraforming on account of its 14-day night, Mahina’s sister moon Sagamore never let its space presence atrophy the way Ben’s moon had. Like Mahina, they sent malcontents into space, but revolutionaries rather than convicts.
Zan frowned in surprise. “Sounds more sophisticated than Schuyler.”
Ben barked a laugh. “No. A frontier boom town.”
“What did they do with the old sick convicts?”
“By now they’re either useful or dead.” Ben’s comm light was blinking, so he stabbed it.
“Prosper, this is skiff 8L, over.”
Based on his plot, that would be the sled that slipped in to pace him, about 50 meters off his bigger iceberg. “Skiff 8L, Prosper Actual, what’s up?”
“Hoping you might have work for us, captain. Want us to chop a berg for you? We didn’t make quota.”
“I got crew, 8L,” Ben replied. “Why come in if you’re short?”
“Injury. First timer didn’t follow instructions.”
Ben pursed his lips. “Not taking anyone on board.”
“Not asking, Prosper. She’s bound for medical. Just hoping for beer money, 50 MO bucks.”
“To chop a berg?” The words escaped Ben’s mouth without thought. They must have three crew on that skiff, plus the injured one. Not a lot of money for dissecting an iceberg into chunks to fit through the water hole. He couldn’t imagine asking for less than 50 MO per person. “Make it a hundred.”
“Uh, what?”
“I’ll pay you 100 bucks. Keep the inclusions toward your quota. I’m dropping off the big berg in the junkyard for later. Chop the small after we dock. That work for you?”
“Hell, yeah. Thank you!”
“Good. Drop your injury and meet us at dock 3B. Prosper out.”
“Separate currency?” Zan asked.
“Yeah, conversion’s a beast,” Ben confirmed absently. He brought the ship around to their designated drop-off and brought them to relative rest. “Willow, lose the big berg here.”
“Aye, sar,” the first mate confirmed. She shared the engineering console with Cope for this leg, down in the hold. A few minutes later, she reported, “Berg at relative rest in junkyard. Free to go.”
Ben soon acquired a new clearance from Clive in MO traffic control and followed the purple road to dock 3B. Unlike the bad old days, MO launched the docking magnets and drew them in properly, providing an airtight umbilical and everything. Ben needed to park at 90 degrees to station gravity to fit his awkward berg, but good enough.
“All hands, we are arrived at Mahina Orbital. Release from pressure precautions, proceed as planned. Be advised, we have a gravity mismatch on the gangway. Captain out.” He switched channels. “Cope, Willow, I hired a team to chop ice for us. Identifier is skiff 8L.”
“Captain,” Cope objected, “we don’t have money for that.”
“My tab, chief,” Ben replied. “You worry too much.”
Willow interrupted. “Captain? We have a Wilder knocking on the door.”
Ben grinned at Zan, who whooped. “We’ll be right down!” Zan opened the pressure doors while Ben closed down his console. In a couple minutes, they vaulted over the railing into the cargo hold, narrowly averting impalement on the ranks of trees below. Artful new sales tags flapped from branches in their wake.
The newly arrived sergeant had already finished trading a hug with Kassidy, and handshakes with the rest. He pulled out the stops to greet his soul-brother Zan with double fist-bumps, speed-bags, and a joint Denali hunter yowl. He let Ben off with a simple handshake and half-hug.
“Oh, hey,” Ben added. “Sorry to put you to work right away, but I hired a skiff 8L to chop ice for us.”
“Bad news, that,” Wilder allowed.
“Problem people?” Ben inquired.
“Not sure. Got the jinx. Bad luck crew,” he added for Cope’s benefit. “Haven’t made quota in a month.”
Ben tilted his head. “Yet they came in early for an injury. Offered to lop the berg for 50 MO-bucks. Willow, I told them 100. Unless they really screw up, give them an extra 50 for a tip.”
Cope shot him a pained expression. “You’re having trouble with this ‘we’re broke’ thing, aren’t you?”
“Nah, Cope,” Wilder spoke up for him. “Ben’s righteous for MO. You’re a stranger around here! Don’t know our ways!”
“You’re still a wanker,” Cope replied, initiating a brief slapping contest. Wilder and Cope sparred for fun for two years on the Thrive. Not friends, their natural animosity added to their fun.
“You got people, Wilder?” Ben asked as they calmed down. He peered through the window inclusion in the big ramp door, automatically tilting his head to match the gate on the far end.
“Thought I’d ask what you need first,” the sergeant replied. “I might lose my job for leaving station. Commander Cortez being a bitch and all.”
“Are you two still together?” Zan asked. Cortez and Wilder were lovers on the Denali trip. The hunter hadn’t seen them in a decade.
“Hell, no,” Wilder confirmed. That’s why the pair left Sass’s crew. Their relationship wasn’t great. Sass had no use for security for three years subjective on the way to Sanctuary. Meanwhile here on MO things were looking up. So they stayed. Cortez earnestly worked her way up the ranks, while Wilder remained a goof-off. He laughingly explained this to Zan while others got busy.
Kassidy, Eli, and Quire loaded the waiting trees onto grav lifters. Willow’s proposal to jettison the damned things into space was unfairly vetoed by the captain. Ben took the usual flak from her, but he judged that Eli and Quire could not be OK with murdering the trees. Their counter-proposal was a grand sale on MO instead. Which made sense, Ben supposed. The accidental-looking corridors carved into the asteroid lacked for greenery or any homey touch. They probably also lacked for appropriate lighting or water, but his plant people vowed to rise to the challenge.
The 90-degree gravity twist might be too interesting, though. “Hey, Kassidy? Come here. Bring an empty grav pallet.” Ben sicced her on figuring out how to navigate the bend. He checked on his ice miners, who reported they were headed back from medical. Then he turned to Willow and Cope, Wilder and Zan.
“You expecting trouble, cap?” Wilder inquired, breaking off a chat with Zan.
“Not at all,” Ben returned. “Sort of. Most of us haven’t been to MO since before Denali. I want someone here on the ramp. We’ve got pickup labor on the iceberg. Three noobs peddling trees. Cope, can your business dealings wait til tomorrow? I’ll take you out for sunset drinks.” That’s what he intended last week, a quiet drink with Cope. Somehow that hadn’t happened yet.
Wilder nodded somberly. “Not smart to do business before you get your bearings. Cap, take Zan with you. I’ll babysit the noobs. Willow, you’ve got the door, right?”
Willow hesitated. “If I didn’t have strangers crawling on my iceberg.”
“Yeah, not enough,” Wilder opined.
“I’m meeting tonight,” Cope countered. “Teke and Zan with me.”
“I’ll go with you, too,” Ben attempted.
“Counter-indicated,” his ex insisted. “Ben, none of us is a lightweight. Though I hadn’t bargained for how much this place has changed.”
Wilder curled a lip, with an unhappy glance toward Ben. “What part of the station, Cope?”
“Not sharing that. Look, gang, this is Spaceways confidential. I told you. There’s some secret stuff this trip.” He’d been exacting on that point, too. There would be no visitors on board, no private comms off the ship without his personal supervision.
“Cope,” Ben attempted, “it’s not that we doubt you in a fight. But MO at sunset is one big rowdy drunk. You’re not righteous –”
“What does that mean?” the chief demanded. The president, Ben corrected himself. The moment they docked, his ex became boss again.
“You don’t fit in,” Wilder clarified. “Like you don’t know righteous. You look old. Everyone else looks 25 or they’re a loser.”
Ben nodded. “I’d suggest your best Spaceways coveralls, Cope. They still have ‘Prez’ emblazoned on the back?”
“I want to be discreet.”
“You can’t,” Wilder judged. “Not a chance. Especially not with a pair of Denali on your heels. Your looks scream weirdo. At sunset, if you’re lucky, you’ll just get rolled.”
Ben sighed loudly. “Look, Cope, I’ll stand in the hall, you don’t have to tell me anything –”
“Great,” Wilder said. “Then you’ll get kidnapped for ransom, too. Look, Cope, this whole station is lawless chaos. Especially on Dusk. You wouldn’t believe the drugs. They’ll kidnap you, wake up in the morning wondering who the hell you are, then slit your throat because they realize it’s not worth the risk once they’re sober. It’s a straight up ‘No!’ You, to
o, Ben. Have I ever steered you wrong?”
“Nah, I trust you,” Ben assured him. “Cope, you’ll have to trust me.”
“Not me?” Wilder asked, hand to his heart as though wounded.
Cope snorted. “Fine. Stupid suit, and Ben comes with me. And Wilder…watches the trees.” In a rare instance of accord, Cope stood with Willow regarding the excess foliage. This point of agreement didn’t mar their mutual antipathy.
“Excuse me, where do I go?” Hunter inquired. He’d joined the back of the throng, and kept inconspicuous.
They turned to appraise the nearly-president a moment. “Abso-fucking-lutely nowhere,” Wilder concluded.
“Amen to that,” Ben confirmed. “Let’s don those matching suits. Teke, you have Spaceways coveralls, right?”
Cope nodded, but turned back. “Hunter, you’re with me.”
Ben, Willow, and Sergeant Wilder shared a sad head-shake as Cope led the way up to the catwalk to change.
57
“Hello, shoppers!” Kassidy hailed the milling pre-sunset drinkers in the Level 5 concourse. Not that they celebrated the true sunset here, which happened when the sun dropped behind Pono relative to the orbital. On Mahina, it was always sunset somewhere. The orbital crossed that line every 90 minutes or so. So why wait for the official hour of sunset at Mahina Actual? Whenever they knocked off for the weekend was a great time to start drinking.
A few brought their beers closer and circled the pocket forest suddenly sprung up in their midst.
“I bet you’re wondering about the trees!” Kassidy called. “These are for sale! That’s right, you can bring home your own tree!” She breathed deeply. “Smell that freshness! That pure air! These are air-scrubbing trees, expressly designed to draw toxins and volatiles out of the atmo so you can breathe deep!”
A woman stretch, with perfect Yang-Yang erect posture at 240 cm tall, bent to sniff obligingly at a fruit tree. She shrugged, unimpressed.
Her slightly shorter male companion said, “Hey, it’s that guy!”
“What guy?”