by Ginger Booth
“There’s that. Alright, Wilder, it’s back to the closet for dear Willow.”
“You can’t keep me in a closet forever!” she hissed. “I demand you release me here on MO!”
But that was the plan. Cut her loose with nothing but her own memory and a lot of bad-mouthing. But damned if she hadn’t found a way to slip data out, sure that good old Ben wouldn’t check. And what kind of software back doors had she installed on Prosper over the years?
“No way in hell. Wilder, if she doesn’t shut up, duct-tape her mouth again.”
“You can’t leave me on Hell’s Bells!” Willow whined. “How many times have I protected you in the bars there?”
“Once,” Ben allowed. “Good bar fight. The other time you’re thinking of was on MO. Sure, I owed you one. But that was a long time ago. You’ve been abusive ever since.”
“Really?” Kassidy asked. “Why’d you hire her?”
Ben sighed, and allowed himself to speak fairly. “She contacted me. Saw the Prosper in the news. Wanted to go to space, for the adventure. She asked for a job mopping the floors or something. I hired a bunch of people. But she ran a successful farm for years. It’s a business. She had skills, she got stuff done. Worked her way up.”
When she reached first mate, it went to her head, though. She yelled and belittled and berated. Ben never needed to yell at the crew. Back on Thrive, Abel only yelled to make himself heard. Ben hired good crew, and treated them fairly. Maybe he was too slow to fire people. But Willow’s abuse never improved performance problems.
“Tag her,” Ben requested.
Kassidy injected a tracer deep into Willow’s thigh, angling it to nestle behind a major artery. Ben appreciated her medical skill. The tiny tag was smaller than a rice grain, and impossible for Willow to extract.
The sergeant chose to duct-tape her mouth as a preventative before dragging her away again. She got a bucket for a latrine between toilet visits, every four hours except eight for overnights. She could manage not to need the bucket. She ate the same as everyone else. She slept on the closet floor, but had blankets and a pillow. The arrangement wasn’t perfect. But Wilder didn’t mind, and she’d just have to suck it up.
The trouble was, Ben wasn’t sure it was any safer to release her on Hell’s Bells. The law on MO went to the highest bidder. Rego Vultures could buy her out of the brig and wring her dry the minute Prosper left dock. But the Saggies might make a play to take over Thrive Spaceways’ business too, with Cope edged out of the picture.
He wiped a bloody chip clean and slotted it into the monitor to check its contents. Willow kept a blackmail folder of pictures, most from inside the cabins. She caught him and Cope in a seemingly compromising position, despite the fact Ben never got beyond a kiss. That photo would do nothing but upset the children. A bunk-bed spy eye caught a closeup of Kassidy alone in berthing enjoying…herself. Likewise Hunter. Both public figures caught in extremely private activity.
Kassidy swatted his hand away and tilted the monitor away from him to scroll through those shots.
“I’ve seen them,” he assured her. “Cope and I removed the cameras.” Ben found nothing on the microchip beyond what he’d seen on Willow’s comm tab.
“Kill her,” Kassidy begged.
Ben popped the chip out and slipped all three into the recycling chute. Cope kept custody of the comm tab itself for legal purposes, just in case. “She stays. Until we think of something else.”
But he knew this answer wasn’t good enough.
MO Security Chief Cortez laughed at the suggestion. “No, you won’t find a protein printer for sale out here, Ben. Forget it.”
She rocked her hammock with a foot against a palm tree. The Silver Sands was the classiest bar in MO, nestled down in the rock. In space, most got nature-sick from the constant artificial environments. This particular oasis offered a tropical island retreat. A giant wall display showed a pristine beach with moving sunlit turquoise waves. At its base, a bright wading pool lapped at a beach built on that edge of the bar’s floor. A barefoot paddy stood in the water and groomed the sand with a clutch of sturdy leaves. A gentle breeze ruffled their hair, bearing the scent of flowers and coconut with touch of fish. Fake sunlight dappled through palm fronds onto Cortez, though most of the bar guests opted for shady tables and high stools.
Ben had several goals for this meet, their first since returning. Before cutting any deals, he wanted a read on the mood at Mahina Orbital. He attempted a courtesy call to the station’s captain to feel out his legal status, but she wouldn’t return his comms. Even their old shipmate Cortez wouldn’t talk except face to face. He had a prodigious balance of MO-bucks. He needed to launder that money and get some down to his dad.
And his crew wanted a protein printer. He loved Schuyler deep-fry himself, the flavor of home. Kassidy and Hunter waxed particularly strident against daily donuts.
He wheedled, “Surely someone has a spare cooking printer.”
“Ben, this place is growing like a mushroom,” Cortez differed. “The printers can barely keep up in the cafeterias.”
“The skiff crews. Someone must have brought a printer up?”
“Miners get a half kilo weight allowance up from Mahina,” she differed. “Hey! Bring us another round!” That last was to one of her guards. Like Wilder said, she didn’t go anywhere without her entourage. “Speaking of, Gorky’s bringing up another cohort of miners day after tomorrow. Newbies. Want my advice? Be gone by then.”
“Why’s that?” Cope growled, leaning on the palm trunk. Like Ben, he nursed a glass beer mug drawn from their table’s pitcher.
Cortez shrugged and dunked her fruit-on-a-stick into her pricey sweet cocktail. “Anyone could be on Gorky’s ship, masquerading as a miner. My people can’t protect Prosper. A relief ship comes in, this whole station goes to hell.”
Wilder looked resigned and nodded emphatically. At Ben’s glance, he elaborated, “New toughs want to throw their weight, establish themselves. The new meek get picked on. Fresh in their new Yang-Yangs, they all got raging hormones to relive their misspent youth. The ones rotating out have debts to settle. It’s an effing circus for a couple weeks.”
“Gorky, huh? He got an agent on station?” Ben pressed. He had MO-bucks to burn, and needed a way to convert them to Mahina credits. This was good news, potentially.
Cortez’s attention caught on something behind him. “Close in!” she barked to her guards. Obediently, they shuffled to take station at the four corners of her rope hammock, looking ridiculous, like slave litter bearers in some classical Roman fantasy. She grinned. “Speaking of. This ought to be good!”
Ben turned his head the wrong way. A delighted Teke tapped his shoulder and pointed him the right direction. A women’s posse had entered the bar, a half dozen armed with steel crowbars and such.
“Local etiquette,” Teke inquired. “Can we join in?”
Wilder’s neck whiplashed toward the insane Denali. “What?” Ben told the sergeant that he and Zan were to guard Teke and Cope, and himself to a lesser extent. “No!”
“Let’s!” the hunter Zan agreed with gusto. Both Denali appeared demented in their bloodthirsty joy.
Not easy men to guard, one felt.
73
Before Ben could spike the Denalis’ fun of joining the incipient bar fight, the posse leader yelled out in a belligerent soprano, “Dork Boner! We got a score to settle with you!”
“Aw, a little girl band come to spank me!” A 260-cm stretch stood and cracked his knuckles. In Ben’s youth, a stretch like that would be practically disabled, stooped double and in pain. The Yang-Yangs rendered the miner’s immense frame strong and straight. Hard labor laid on the prodigious muscle. “Sexy!” He howled and beat his chest.
Ben found Dork’s bulging pecs and biceps rather repulsive. Six-pack abs sounded nice in theory, but not at eye level. What kind of an ass went bare-chested to a bar anyway? But he supposed the man wasn’t prowling for him. Not his type, wron
g kind of bar. The Magic Maze across the hall catered to the gay crowd, with a labyrinth of potted hedges to offer plentiful intimate cul-de-sacs. On the whole, Ben was glad he’d never run across this dumb bruiser there. What a horrible surprise to run across in the bushes. He lifted his beer for another sip and leaned back to enjoy the show.
“This bastard raped us! Let no one aid him!” the soprano sang out.
Cope leaned on the table beside Ben, and commented, “Worth a shot.”
“Can we aid you?” Teke called.
“Teke, shut up and drink your beer,” Cope instructed. “None of our business.”
“You listen to Cope,” Cortez corroborated him.
The posse of women stood firm, trying to get up the nerve to begin. Dork grunted, “Ooh, ooh, ooh!” He held out his arms in a circle. Either he wanted to ape a monkey or show off his biceps.
One of the taller women at the back worked up her nerve and strode forth, swinging her crowbar like a bat. The proprietor’s staff hastened to retrieve tables and chairs from the vicinity. They made a feint to snatch Ben’s table, but Cope slapped a hand down. “Mine!”
He turned to Cortez. “You don’t stop this?”
“Gotta stay neutral,” she replied. “Otherwise I’d join her side. I do miss these fights!”
“It’s stylized, Cope,” Ben soothed. “Five minutes max. See the bartender with the timer? Killing blows are murder, with a ton of witnesses. The rest, Yang-Yangs and an auto-doc can fix.”
“Oh, yeah?” Cope considered that. “I got yangs. You got an auto-doc.”
Ben glowered at him. “Stay out of it! The sides are even.” The crowbars were excessive, but six women against that monster seemed fair.
The bravest woman finally got in close enough to swing. Ben winced at what amounted to a slow-motion haymaker. Even Dork the dunce simply backed up a step so she missed. “Ooh, ooh, ooh! I love me a feisty woman!” He smacked his lips in appreciation as the woman continued her swing around helpless, carried by the heavy steel’s momentum. Dork reached in to squeeze her butt.
Now three women advanced brandishing their bars like spears. Beside Ben, Cope selected Wilder’s beer bottle and considered its glass thickness from different angles. The women charged, thrusting their poles. Maybe one was trying for Dork’s face and couldn’t reach that high. The other two poked toward his crotch.
“Don’t, don’t,” Ben moaned.
Dork snagged not one but two of the crowbars. “Ooh, thankee! Toothpicks! You girls is just too sweet to me! I love ya, gonna eat you up! Yom, yom!”
“These chicks can’t fight worth a damn,” Cope opined. He thoughtfully lined up the bottle against the tile-top table, and struck the cap end off neatly, yielding himself a foaming geyser of beer with a jagged neck.
“Aw, come on,” Ben protested. “You got broken glass on the nice beach! People wade barefoot!”
Cope chuckled and leaned down, gazing through the glass to gauge his shot. Distracted by his ex, the captain didn’t see his other three table-mates evaporate into the cheering crowd until he turned back to the show.
Now, of course, the posse of women was stymied. The Boner had the reach, and two weapons. They had no route to come at him. Like most Mahinans, the combatants thought in 2D, despite months or years in space.
Thrive alumni didn’t have that problem. Teke – who moved first – regularly thought in 3, or 6, or however many dimensions he found convenient to frame a problem, much the same way Cope casually jutted out from a handy wall or ceiling at odd angles.
Now the physicist ran to the bar, hopped on top of it, and launched from there to the top of a palm tree. Suddenly restoring his gravity to something above 1 g, he came down feet-first on Dork’s head, then bounced at fractional g to another treetop, both trunks waving madly.
Zan chose a more direct approach, from a different angle, launching a moment after Teke to arrive simultaneously. On heavy grav, he cartwheeled onto one of Dork’s crowbars while he was distracted. His own spinning torque tore the metal from his target’s hand. Back on his feet only a moment, Zan spun to knock the other crowbar upward with his new weapon, to send it flying.
But Wilder knocked the crowbar from the air with a deftly applied bar stool. He kicked the tool across the floor to the grateful women. Unlike the Denali lunatics, the sergeant understood the rules of this game.
And unlike Cope who, the moment Dork began to clear his mind from these distractions, lobbed the broken beer bottle at his head.
“I wish you hadn’t done that,” Ben complained. Cortez cracked up laughing in her hammock.
By the unwritten rules of MO, this started out as a grudge match. But with three of the onlookers refusing to stay on the sidelines, now it turned into a full house melee. Cortez bade one of her footmen to snag Ben to join her sitting sideways in the hammock, squished together in the middle. Cope, a Yang-Yang reinforced stretch himself, though not extremely so, danced around the table against two guys who took exception to his beer bottle throw. When one committed to a lunge, he simply flipped onto the table and fell away toward the ceiling.
Motivated by excess drink, his assailants flipped their grav generators to follow, but weren’t nearly as adept. Cope lost them in the palm fronds.
Teke, pursuing his hopeless life mission against stupidity, attempted to teach a couple of the women how to apply a crowbar with feeling and impact. Zan simply ripped one of the weapons out of a woman’s hand, and leering with unholy glee, set out to brain Dork Boner as though stalking the dire koala back home.
“Does he know not to kill anyone?” Cortez inquired uneasily.
Ben didn’t think that merited an answer. She lived with the Denali hunters, same as Ben. And Zan had diplomatic immunity. He literally could get away with murder. “Zan of Waterfalls!” he attempted to call across the general scuffle. “This fight is unworthy!”
Zan didn’t hear him. He was too busy stalking, with the lithe grace of a Denali forest puma. Cope listened, though. He dropped on him out of the palm fronds and took him to the floor, somehow managing to identify as friend not foe before Zan slaughtered him. Or maybe he just surprised him by snatching him up with sudden antigravity.
Wilder, out of breath, managed to eddy out of the fracas near Cortez and her reverse harem. Ben held a hand up before he could speak, fishing his comm out of his pocket to see an incoming message.
“Dammit! Gotta go!”
Ben clambered from the clinging clutch of the hammock, pausing only to drop a quick friendly kiss on Cortez’s forehead. “Seeya, girlfriend!”
Wilder arrested him with an arm around the neck. “Cap, there’s a bit of a mess by the exit, you see?”
Ben shot him a glance of contempt and slipped out of his hold with a deft duck and turn. He ran to the wall display of crashing surf, and flipped 90 degrees to trot along a cresting wave. Wilder caught the hint and followed, snagging Teke from his adoring newfound crowbar acolytes along the way. Cope and Zan sauntered down the wall to flip themselves out the door before Ben reached it.
“Just when we were having fun,” Cope complained. He must have dropped into the fight again while Ben wasn’t looking, because blood seeped from a split lip. “What’s the hurry?”
“Willow escaped!”
Deep into the twisting corridors of the rock, Ben followed his tracker’s direction-finder to lead them toward Willow. Wilder wanted to stop for weapons. All they had with them was a crowbar Cope confiscated from Teke.
Zan pointed out there were five of them, and they had no trouble dancing past a human rhino, a half dozen wannabe Valkyries, and a bar full of side fights. Wilder conceded the point.
Ben’s signal was clear as day. He even managed to get Willow’s distance from them – with both parties moving – in real time. The problem was the corridors. MO’s rock side featured no grav plates, keeping the place at zero g. By convention, most interior decorating and architecture used the surface as the reference ‘up,’ exactly flipped from th
e old station on top. But that wasn’t always convenient, or someone misbehaved, and frequently a flourish of paint on the way advertised that the upcoming section was oriented to a different down. The corridors themselves tended to flat bottom and top with bellied-out walls, and veered at random. These were tidied mine shafts, not a municipal plan. Residents could carve new cubic wherever they wanted past a certain radius from downtown. The mental gyrations to follow where they were, where the fugitive first mate was, and a strategic path to get there from here, kept Ben seeing cross-eyed.
“Hold up,” Wilder murmured. He tugged Ben and Cope to the wall. “Company from the bar.” With another reach, he reeled in Teke and placed him between the other two.
The physicist’s adrenaline sang too strongly for that. “I wanna play!”
Cope hung onto him. “No. Let Wilder and Zan handle it.”
Ben grabbed hold on Teke as well. “You’d split Wilder’s focus.”
Clearly disagreeing, the Denali scowled and leaned back, pelvis thrust out, one foot coquettishly on the wall, reserving the right to launch if warranted.
“Why are you following us?” Wilder challenged. Ben lost sight of the hunter Zan during his exchange with Teke. Another stretch, closer to Cope’s rangy silhouette than Dork Boner’s, sauntered around the corner into view. He wore the same coveralls as every other miner, apparent age 25, hair shaved bald, no tattoos.
“My boss wants to talk to your boss,” the bland one drawled. “Let’s not get ourselves killed for them, huh?”
Wilder crossed his arms. “Who’s your boss?”
“Well, he should be your boss –”
Zan exploded out of a doorway the second the guy was between them, and tackled him with a dive into the back of his hamstrings. Ben winced – Frazzie used to do that to him. Surprising how painful a hurtling 4-year-old could be if she aimed it just wrong. The man fell to the floor, with Zan pinning his legs with his knees. Wilder kicked out the folded arms he’d used to break his fall.