by Ginger Booth
“A name, dumb-ass,” Wilder requested.
A red dot of light quickly wriggled across the three men in mid-corridor. A shot sang out, and retreated footsteps.
Wilder wheeled, but didn’t pursue.
“Dead,” Zan reported. “Execution.”
“Yeah, but who were they trying to kill?” the sergeant wondered.
“Him,” Ben supplied. “Good shot. Aimed in a fraction of a second.”
Cope crooked his finger to beckon their two fighters to join them against the wall. Once they arrived, positioned to either side of the original trio, he explained, “If the enemy of my enemy was a friend, he’d say hi by now. Instead they ran. Sounded like two.”
“Yeah,” Wilder conceded. “What the hell?”
“I checked his pockets,” Zan offered. “No comms, no ID. Empty.”
Ben checked his tab, then the corridor to make sure he wasn’t turned around again. “Willow changed direction. Backtracking.”
Wilder sighed, “You’re the boss, but. My call, get you three back to the ship. Then Zan and I go hunting with guns, not a crowbar.”
“Can we intercept her?” Ben wondered, showing the tab to Teke, Copeland leaning in from the other side.
In irritation, Wilder snatched the device. He was the one who lived here. Though he’d already admitted he didn’t know this section. The corridor served a quiet miner’s neighborhood of quads. Dozens of similar halls branched out in a hemisphere from downtown. He handed the comm back and faced the corpse. “This way.”
74
“Hey!” Wilder called, spotting the ex-first mate with a miner up ahead. They were nearing the old station again, just another level or two to the docks. To his surprise, they didn’t run. They turned. Willow’s mouth and hands were bound with duct tape.
“Howdy!” the man called back. “I believe this woman belongs to you?”
Willow growled as the sergeant and company caught up.
“Do we know you?” Ben demanded.
“Judge Frampton, team leader, skiff 8L. We’ve spoken. Really appreciated the pay on that iceberg last weekend, captain. Generous tip. We even made quota, thanks to you.”
“I remember,” Ben agreed. “Willow paid you the full amount, I hope, 150?”
“That she did, and I appreciated it,” Judge agreed. “What she’s telling me tonight, not so much.”
“She can say some strange things,” Ben allowed.
“What she said was, she tried to steal your skyship in the middle of your settling the paddies in KM-2,” Judge replied. “That don’t set right with me.”
“Nor us,” Wilder muttered.
Judge nodded. “Then she claimed she had info for them Rego Vultures, what tried to put you out of business. Tried to kidnap your fuzzy, um.”
“Physicist,” Wilder supplied.
“That one,” Judge agreed. “Yeah, I got no use for Vultures. They’ve screwed me often enough. This Willow offered to cut me in, and I said no dice. Captain Acosta here treated me right. Thought you might want her back.”
“We surely do,” Ben breathed. Though Wilder thought he looked rather sad about this. He could relate. They worked so hard to get this bitch back, yet they really didn’t want her. “Would a thousand MO-bucks be an insult? A reward, for helping us out.”
Willow gargled some outrage. Cope looked mighty annoyed as well. A thousand MO-bucks was a lot. Wilder would have suggested a couple hundred, but wasn’t surprised when Ben erred on the side of generosity.
“Oh, that’s real generous, captain, uh….”
“Captain Benjamin Acosta,” Ben supplied. “Of the ringship Prosper. Friends call me Ben.”
“Aw, that’d be presumptuous, Captain Acosta. Though sir, I was wondering.”
Ben completed the money transfer. Wilder took custody of the first mate they didn’t want.
“Yes?” Ben returned.
“Looks like you’re out a first mate,” Judge pointed out. “Now me, I got nothing but an eighth grade education, used to run a distribution hub down south, til I got too old and sick. Been out with the miners eight years now. Led my skiff for six. God I love space.”
“Your point, Mr. Frampton?” Ben urged.
“Yes, sir. I’d just adore a job on a ringship. I ain’t never been to Hell’s Bells, even, in all this time. And shoot, y’all even went to Denali! Righteous! It’s just, sir, a job on the Prosper would be orgasmic.”
Ben blinked at the choice of words. Cope squeezed his elbow, no doubt to pull him aside for a stern chat. Wilder appreciated that, so he didn’t have to. After all, the reason the crew was down to trusted allies from the Thrive, unpaid, was that Spaceways couldn’t trust anybody these days.
“Come by tomorrow,” Ben decided, without consulting anyone. He was captain after all. “Call ahead. We’ve got business. Oh, say, Judge. You know what I need? A protein printer. Thing is, we left ours for the paddies.”
Judge broke into a grin ear to ear. “I shall, absolutely, contact you! I’ll see if I can rustle up one of them printers, too. Wily prey up here. But that’s what you need in a first mate, right? Someone resourceful.”
Ben shrugged. “Or an ordinary crewman. My hiring standards are high. Lots of people want to be a hero.”
“They do! Right you are, captain.” He ducked his head in respect and took off, looking deliriously happy.
“I don’t like him,” Wilder said. “He’s fishy.”
“You think everyone’s fishy,” Ben reminded him. “Or squirrelly, or monkey or…”
“That way I’m right when it counts,” Wilder argued. “Suspicious is my job, cap. Come on, bitch, your closet awaits.” Ben was too trusting by half. With that sunny disposition and do-good nature, he tended to forget that people weren’t nice.
“Captain,” Cope said, “the owner requests a moment in your office. At your convenience.”
Ben sighed. “Get in line, boss. What can I say, I like him. Good attitude. Solved one problem for me. I bet he’ll solve the other, too.”
“In your office,” Cope repeated.
“Didn’t like my elevator, huh?” Pollan quipped the next day. He said it flippantly, but Cope could tell the crusty factory czar of MO felt a little hurt.
Cope grabbed his hand with two of his, taking the lead. “Got accosted twice last night. One guy ended up dead. We don’t know who shot him. Your elevator was awesome.”
He hoped Ben didn’t gainsay him. His ex knew that elevator, with wholly inadequate pressure safeguards, punched every panic button Cope had. But Pollan didn’t need to know that. They brought Prosper’s shuttle rather than walk the corridors to his private lair this time.
His old frenemy raised his brows. “This visit related to those pictures we looked at last time?”
“Partly.” Cope waved an after-you gesture, and fell in beside the man. Ben, Teke, and Zan trailed behind. At Cope’s insistence, Wilder stayed home today. The four crew they left behind last night weren’t proof against their prisoner escaping. After what happened, at least they weren’t agitating for shore leave. They wouldn’t get any if he had anything to say about it, and he said plenty to Ben.
Pollan ushered them into the same remote office. This time a woman waited within, an unadulterated 40 or so, with space-pale skin and straight brown hair tied back tight, with a few threads of grey. Her white lab coat and sensible shoes clinched the identification.
“Dr. Pointreau. A pleasure to meet you.” Copeland introduced Teke and Zan as well. He skipped Ben, although he couldn’t help checking his face. If his ex still had feelings for the Sagamore metallurgist, it didn’t show.
However, she placed hands on Ben’s upper arms and traded air-kisses with him. “Cher Ben! So good to see you again.”
Friendly, Cope concluded, but not likely to jump into bed this trip. Though, to be honest, he found her quite attractive himself. She seemed straightforward and pleasant, but no flirting, and brilliant. He liked her so far.
While Poll
an rustled up iced tea, Cope unrolled the prong tool he’d wrapped in a napkin and carried inside his coveralls. She’d already set up a collection of equipment on the desk. But when she saw it unveiled, she threw up her hands with a smile. “I almost don’t need instruments! This is a distinctive black.”
“Precious,” Cope warned her, laying the prong gently into her hands. “We have only the one sample. In Mahina space, so far as I know.”
“Yes, and there is another on Sagamore,” Pointreau confirmed. “From the, how do you say, cache. Sanctuary cache. They asked me to test that, too.” She put on an extreme articulated monocle and studied the surface. “I must scratch for sample, I am sorry.” She laid the…powered egg beater…on a white velvet mat. With a tiny tool that glinted like diamond, she scraped near the handle. Cope couldn’t see any of the coating come off, but she set her scraper aside. She transfered some speck to a glass slide, and sandwiched it with another slide for safekeeping.
But she wasn’t done with the tool yet. Having removed her pepper flake from the black metal, she studied the edges of the tiny incision minutely with her monocle. “Fascinating,” she murmured. “The black, she is a coating. The same with the…antler device. The substrate metal also, I think, the same.”
At this point she brought more instruments to bear, taking precision images. The men turned their backs while she applied some high-powered lasers with exquisitely narrow collimated light beams. Cope would’ve loved to watch, but she only had one set of black goggles.
“Magnifique,” she concluded at last, after a half hour, sitting back in profound satisfaction. “You have questions, Monsieur Copeland?”
“Do you know what it is?” he inquired.
“No idea.” The way she took a long sip of tea suggested she had her theories.
Cope’s eyes narrowed. “What relation are you to the people who took the antlers?”
She threw up her hands as though flinging away something that smelled bad. “None. I assure you. They stole a priceless artifact, of great scientific importance. They sell it to make money to wage war. Please understand. I too believe Sagamore must be free. The paddies, they are people, no matter how small. I am a revolutionary. But I am engineer, scientist. To throw away such a treasure for gun money? This is inexcusable.”
“Agreed. Can you make it? The core metal and the coating, not the instrument.”
“Ah, the same shape?”
“A different shape. Several. Do you need the shape in advance?”
“Yes, absolutely,” she confirmed. “I can make, but the micro-crystalline structure of the alloy, you cannot tool it. The metal is too hard. Tooling would warp its atomic lattice, introduce errors. Do you understand?”
“Barely.”
“Mm,” Pointreau hummed sympathetically. “To make an item like this, I pour molten steel and dope it carefully while it cools. No cutting or shaping. Ah! Like ice! If you cut or stir the ice, she turns to slush. Air bubbles, inclusions, broken crystals, a mess. To get a pure, clear ice crystal, no fussing. Yes? This is much more intricate than ice, of course. After I pour and dope the alloy, but before it hardens completely, then the coating I build up in layers. All in vacuum except for doping. The black, she is mostly carbon nanotubes, the most black thing we make. But this…luster…and the texture, this is more doping.”
Cope sighed. “This sounds time-consuming and expensive. And you’ve done it before.”
“I did it before, and I programmed a robot to make it.”
“Really,” Cope purred. “Would you be willing to tell us what you made?”
Pointreau blinked. “An onyx cat. Not real onyx of course, but. A toy. A pin.”
She and Copeland frowned at each other, mutually puzzled.
Ben intervened. “Elise, did you make the onyx cat for a paying client, or?”
“Ah! No! For myself,” she cried, clearly relieved. “To see if I could. And its luster, she is so pretty. I make jewelry, with diamond eyes. I don’t have it with me.”
Ben continued, “The antler people, did they want the cat?”
She brushed that away with another flick of her fingers. “Those people are stupid. No, I have not made this metal for anyone who uses it as it was meant.”
Cope couldn’t help himself. “How is it meant to be used?”
“Oh, I do not know really. But this is very specific. Conductivity. Temperature as well as electricity, yes? And light. This black, it absorbs photons to excite the lattice inclusions. Almost like a battery.” She picked up the egg beater instrument, musingly. “Like the instrument to pull a baby from the womb. I never know the name in English.” She mock-shuddered, perhaps at the notion of inserting egg beaters into her nether regions. Cope figured that had to hurt. “This is special. Its shape, its composition to the molecular level, precise. Quite beautiful.”
“But if you were making something from it, what would you make?”
“An onyx cat.” Seeing that Copeland was lost, she added, “I can make you what you want. But the metal, she can be no thicker than twenty millimeters, yes? And no piece bigger than sixty centimeters. Or I would build a new machine. That takes longer, maybe too long. I ask much money to waste that much time.”
“No!” Cope assured her. “Those dimensions would be fine! How long would this take?”
She shrugged. “I study the shapes of course, but one day. To make one piece.”
Cope sighed. “And the price?”
She exchanged a look with Pollan, who answered, “We want 125 thousand. Per item.”
Cope deflated even further. Even if the mansion sold and his lawyers got every penny back that Carmack’s treasury thieves held hostage, Spaceways didn’t have that kind of cash laying around. He needed five pieces. This quote of 625k credits was more than he owed on Prosper for a year’s loan payments – and they needed Prosper.
Ben offered, “For five items, two hundred thousand. Two are small, like this. They can fit in your annealing kiln together. Delivery in three days. Come on, your quote of over a hundred grand a day is one hell of a rate. Diamonds would be cheaper.”
“Diamonds are easy,” Pointreau countered. “This is a work of art.”
“Which you already figured out how to make, to create a piece of jewelry. For yourself.” Ben turned to Pollan. “We have other pieces to make. Top of the line carbon steel, vacuum zero-g lattice purity, no imperfections. We’re talking a million for the package deal here, Pollan. In utter confidence. I demand that in our deal – word gets out, schematics, any of it, and you owe me half my money back. We got Vultures breathing down our necks. Come on, you know Thrive Spaceways. We keep it secret now. Later we provide it to anyone who can cover fair costs and a 50% margin.”
“Yeah, you’re stupid that way,” Pollan allowed in distaste.
Cope battled valiantly to keep his eyes on the desk. Ben, where the hell are you going to get a million?
“If you want more, I don’t have it,” Ben stressed. “But we need these parts. Ask too much, and I swear at you for wasting me weeks, and buy my cast steel from the hellbellies. But this black stuff, Elise is the only one who can make it. She is the metallurgy artiste of the entire system.”
They were lucky the few hundred thousand people of the Aloha system produced any metallurgist, let alone this quality. Pointreau was in a league with Teke. And neither of them were Mahinans. Cope needed her.
After a long moment, Pollan asked, “Half up front.”
“You have no up front expenses,” Ben pointed out. “Make the first one of these, and the first steel piece. We’ll come back for them tomorrow. Dr. Pointreau and her instruments will verify the quality. Then I’ll advance you half for the rest.”
The two narrowed eyes at each other for another few heartbeats.
“Oh, testosterone!” Dr. Pointreau objected, her nostrils contracting against the imaginary stench. “Pollan, we do this of course. This is meant to be. A million, she is too much. A half million at most. These men, they do n
ot make profit from these pieces. Basic research, scientific instruments. If they are successful, yes, they come back, maybe we become fabulously wealthy. Now? I make another onyx cat. He is so greedy.”
“I don’t believe he has half a million,” Pollan challenged Ben.
Ben pulled up his MO-bucks balance, product of eight long years dragging icebergs in here, ferrying key personnel as a favor, and generally being a good egg. He handed the balance display to Pollan wordlessly.
The factory chief’s eyebrows merged with his receding hairline. “Hell, Ben.”
“It’s such a nuisance to convert to Mahina credits. But I won’t let you steal me blind, Pollan. Fair deal, or no deal.”
Cope plucked the device from Pollan’s fingers. His eyes boggled, too. “You been holding out on me, buddy.”
Ben snatched his comm back and shoved it into his pocket. “Cope, hand them your specs.”
75
“Judge,” Ben greeted him in front of their umbilical late the next morning. Wilder called him down with, ‘You got a visitor.’ The captain tilted his head to see beyond the spacer into the vast echoing dock area beyond. The sergeant and Zan appeared to be playing a game of laser tag.
“Sorry, distracted. Oh, wow! Is it? You found a soy printer? Good man!”
“It’s nothing fancy, sir. But it works. Sheesh, they want a lot for it, though – two k. If that’s too much, I understand –”
Ben cut him off. “Outstanding. I probably ought to check if it works first.” He sighed. This was precisely the sort of busywork a good first mate lived for, and a smart captain dumped it on her. Or the housekeeper, or chief engineer. But Cope was busy, and if he wanted off of Mahina Orbital soon – and he did – the engineer needed to keep his nose to the grindstone. What a gory idiom.
He stepped around the awkward appliance on its battered grav lifter, looking it over. It didn’t match his galley decor, to put it mildly. If he recalled correctly, it was about a third as wide as the restaurant-grade stainless steel beautiful machine he’d lost to a bunch of refugees who would have been happy with a campfire. Not that there was any wood on Mahina’s star side.