Everyone sighed their relief, then started laughing and slapping each other on the back. Right up until Hashin noticed something and pointed at the “Predictive Engine.”
“Uh, First?” he said. “Your tank…”
First looked at the case of timeflies, which had been lying motionless on the bottom, but were now flickering back and forth between dead and flying around the inside of the case, shuttering between the quantum states almost faster than her eye could track.
“Uh, what’s going on?”
“It appears by Sheer not blowing us all up, you’ve trapped the timeflies in a localized temporal paradox.”
“That sounds … bad,” First said. “What do we do?”
Jrill stepped up. “Throw the case in a black hole, hope the singularity sorts it out, and never speak about this again.”
“How far is the closest black hole?”
“Not even a day trip in high-space,” Fenax said from the command cave.
“We have a winner,” First said.
“What do we do about the bomb?” Sheer said.
“Chuck it in after the undead timeflies,” Jrill said.
Loritt shook his head. “No. I’m tired of this nonsense. Sheer, can you rig a timer behind the gamma detector so we can dial in a detonation delay?”
Sheer rubbed the cutting edges of her pincer together in thought. “Should be able to, now that I know which wires do what. Yeah, I can do that.”
“Good. Cut it loose, get it rigged up, and stick it in the cargo bay. I have a job for it.”
CHAPTER 18
First looked across the transit pod to where Hashin sat preparing for the confrontation. She’d been in fights plenty of times. Three days earlier, in fact. But it had always been out of surprise or desperation.
She’s never picked one before.
“I wish Quarried was with us.”
“Don’t think they’d fit in the pod,” Hashin said without looking up from his handheld. “Besides, Grenic aren’t known for being fleet of foot.”
“We could put them on rollerblades or something.”
“And push them around? Wouldn’t they get motion sickness?”
“Can they? What would Grenic puke even look like?”
“Probably like a mining slurry.”
First laughed. “Good one.”
“Was it?” Hashin asked, slightly befuddled. “Anyway, Jrill just signaled she’s in position. Remember, we only have to buy her an eighth larim. Once she’s done, so are we. Don’t let yourself get roped in emotionally. I signal, we break off and leave. Trigger word is home.”
“You won’t have to tell me twice,” First assured him. “I know these guys, at least a little, and nothing about them makes me want to spend even one more rakim in their company than absolutely necessary.”
“One more thing. If they slip up and make any jokes about the bomb, play dumb like we haven’t discovered it yet. If they know we know, this whole thing falls apart. You’re down here to confront the Lividite who beat you up, nothing more.”
“I remember the briefing.”
“Good. And right on cue, here we are.”
The pod rolled to a stop outside the docks and a different set of private slips more than a third of the way around the circumference of Junktion. The neighborhood was rougher, the rent lower, and the maintenance intervals longer. The insulation on the pipes overhead was cracked and yellowed. Water dripped slowly from fittings into dented buckets the hall rats collected it in before recycling it back into the black market for a few extra credits a week.
However, everyone was very well behaved, mostly on account that those who weren’t had drastically higher odds of being folded in half and shoved into a station-keeping thruster propellant tank here than in the more civilized parts of the station.
The slips down here were “private” only in the sense the public avoided the area at all costs in the first place. Security, too, unless there was a murder.
First wasn’t a stranger here, though. This was where, up until a little over a month earlier, she’d delivered stolen aircars to Soolie the Fin’s toughs and where she’d gotten paid for the same. This gave their harebrained scheme its only tenuous chance of success. First’s face was familiar around these parts, if only in passing. Her presence wouldn’t raise much comment or concern from the regulars. Not until she reached Soolie’s territory, where her sudden reappearance would draw all sorts of attention.
But then, that was the entire point.
“Now, follow my lead,” First said. “You’re here to talk me down and drag me away from the fight.”
“I also attended the briefing,” Hashin said flatly. She could never quite tell if he was being sarcastic or not, unless he’d had his Humoric. Then he was a laugh a minute. Hashin fell into position a step behind her and to the left, guarding her weak side, but still in her peripheral vision in case he got jumped.
It was a bit of a walk to the slip Soolie’s newly acquired intercept ship had taken residence in. The two transit pod terminals nearest to it had mysteriously gone offline in recent weeks, doubtlessly a precaution the gang had taken to make it just a little less convenient for the curious to find before they were themselves spotted and intercepted.
Her team wasn’t sure about the ship’s provenance; its chain of ownership documents were obvious forgeries if one knew how to look. Even more obvious was Soolie had acquired it in direct response to Loritt’s crew breaking up his monopoly on the docks that had let him snag contract after contract without a fight. It was Fin’s best chance of keeping pace and competing directly against them beyond Junktion space and, therefore, a very valuable asset to his organization.
“There it is.” Hashin pointed to a converted light cargo ship. It was a wreck, all mismatched modules and peeling paint that barely looked like it should be relied upon to hold atmosphere. Where the Pay to Prey had been hideous in a way that felt menacing, and the Goes Where I’m Towed was deliberately bland to the point of tedium, this ship—they didn’t even know its name—was just plain ugly.
Except for its reactor module and drive spikes. Those were brand new and so cutting edge, one almost bled just laying eyes on them. They looked like they’d just been unboxed from a shipping crate. A crate that doubtlessly had fallen off the back of a bulk transport somewhere. The apparent thinking was cabin air leaks wouldn’t be a problem as long as you got there and back fast enough.
At the bulkhead separating the slip from the rest of the station, First spied a pair of familiar faces. She’d never learned their real names back when she was delivering cars to them. Black market types weren’t big on them, so she’d just taken to calling them Bebop and Rocksteady in honor of a couple of boneheaded monster villains from some old show her dad was obsessed with when she was growing up.
“Tell Jrill to go in five, four, three…” First whispered to Hashin. “Yo! R&B!” she called out before they’d spotted her so they’d know she wasn’t trying to sneak up on them. “I’ve got a bone to pick with one of your mates.”
“First,” Rocksteady opened his four arms wide in a greeting/threat display. “Haven’t seen you down here in what, a month? Two?”
“Not since she jumped ship on us and started working for the competition,” Bebop added coldly. Always right to business, he was.
“Yeah, that’s right.” First came to a stop a few paces away from them, out of lunging distance, but still close. “I’m working for a legit businessman now. Which is why I don’t appreciate it when one of you dregs floats up to cause trouble for me.”
Rocksteady pointed a digit at himself, then Bebop. “Us?” he asked with mock innocence. “We’d never dream of bothering you, First. You know that.”
“Not you two. A Lividite.” She stuck a thumb back at Hashin. “Looks remarkably like this guy here.”
“First,” Hashin put a hand on her shoulder. “I really think we should—”
This prompted the equivalent of a giggle from R&B. She
swept it off contemptuously. “I’m working, Hashin. Well? You guys know the wiggly little Gray I’m talking about. Where is he?”
“You have a lot of gonads coming down here to pick a fight on our turf, defector,” Bebop said.
“I’m a contractor, not a soldier, Beebs. And your friend had a lot of … whatever Lividites pack … coming up to where I work and tearing out a clump of my hair.” She drew back her mop to show the small bald patch. “So did the dude who came to my apartment to scar up my roommate, except his gonads are two-dimensional now. Hope you guys weren’t close.”
That got a reaction, and not from who she’d expected.
“Watch how you speak of the dead or you’ll get the chance to apologize to them personally,” Rocksteady said.
“Oh.” First took an ill-advised step forward. “So you did know him. Or her. Couldn’t tell, really. There wasn’t much left after my Grenic was done with them.”
“Should have brought your Grenic, then, instead of a slippery-skin drug-sucker.”
Hashin put up his hands. “I’m just here to mediate.”
“Bang-up job you’re doing,” Bebop said with just the slightest emphasis on the first word. The two of them shared a knowing look.
First played into it. “What was that all about? You two an item now?”
Rocksteady stepped right up to her, bumping his torso plate against her upper chest.
“You’re just flipping all the switches and levers today, huh, little human? Trying to figure out what does what like the first time you fumbled around boosting a car. Difference is, if you set off my alarm, your friend here will have to pay one of the street kids for a water bucket to pour you into.”
“I’m not afraid of you, Rocky.” First stared up at him, genuine rage burning in her eyes now. “I’ve made some powerful friends.”
“They’re not here. Run along now and find them.”
“First.” Hashin grabbed both her shoulders. “We should go home.”
“Your Gray is a smart one. You should listen to him.”
First almost shook Hashin off again, but the inflection on home snapped her out of it. Jrill was done; they had to go, pronto. So instead, she took a step back and pointed a finger dead center at Rocksteady’s mantle while playing up letting Hashin drag her away by her other arm.
“This isn’t over. You tell the Fin to lay the kark off.”
“Soolie will get the message, don’t you worry.” Rocksteady waved his two right arms away derisively.
First and Hashin turned around and headed back toward the pod terminal. She allowed one side of her lips to curl up. “Oh, he most certainly will.”
Hashin pulled out his handheld and made the call. “Boss, we’re clear. Begin phase two.”
* * *
“With pleasure,” Loritt said from his penthouse, relief washing over him as he cut the link with Hashin. He’d been worried ever since he’d realized he had to send First and Hashin into the Gomeltic’s den alone. He would’ve preferred to send Jrill and Sheer along for muscle. But Sheer’s exoskeleton was still hardening; she hadn’t been medically cleared for action, not to mention she was down a leg. And Jrill was the only one of the team aside from Sheer who had any zero-gravity and vacuum training, so her role was also predetermined. That left Fenax, who was about as useful in a fight as a medium-sized kitchen appliance.
So First and Hashin it had to be. Thankfully, they’d delivered on their assignment without a hitch.
Loritt opened his home desktop with a wave of a hand. The holographic interface appeared over his breakfast table, awaiting his inputs. One icon was very familiar: the Conduit. The secure hotline set up by banks and lenders throughout the galaxy that let them move currencies across light-years, raise or lower interest rates, erase or call in debts, collapse economies, topple governments, and, most importantly to Loritt, send repossession contracts.
For obvious reasons, the system was the most secure in known space. It was not infallible, however. Especially if you didn’t need to send a message through one of its widely scattered nodal stations. Especially if you had a genius-level hacker who found a loophole that would let you intentionally fail to piggyback a fake message on an outbound genuine one. A fake message that would bounce off the outgoing firewalls, leaving it floating around the local Conduit network like an orphaned piece of mail.
Then, all you had to do was change the date/time stamps and sender/receiver information and, provided whoever opened it didn’t dig through the embedded edit history too deeply, you would have a message that looked like it had genuinely come through the Conduit from halfway across the galaxy without ever leaving Junktion.
With two full days of First’s help, Loritt had such a message. With the press of a virtual button, he sent it to both himself and Soolie the Fin and started the clock.
He opened the common link he shared with the rest of his little Subassembly. “Okay, that’s done it. Wait an eighth larim, then everyone double-time march down to the Goes Where I’m Towed. Remember, we’re being watched. It has to be convincing.”
A chorus of affirmations answered him, and Loritt couldn’t help but feel a warm glow.
* * *
“Fin,” Soolie’s consigliere, Rirez, called down from the pool deck. “Hey, Fin, we’ve got a live one on the Conduit.”
“I’m not getting out of the water for less than a quarter million credits.”
“How about thirteen million?”
Soolie gasped, accidentally inhaling pool water in the process and sending himself into a coughing fit.
“Fin, you okay?” the gaunt Prex asked.
“Never mind that. Get me a towel!” Soolie swam to the nearest edge and dragged himself out of the water with his good arm and finished coughing out the water in his windpipe. He grabbed the proffered towel and started drying himself off.
“Always know where your towel is,” Rirez said.
Soolie looked at him oddly. “What?”
Rirez shook himself. “Sorry, I don’t know why I said that just now.”
Soolie stared at him impatiently. “Well? Thirteen million? Go on.”
“Right, repo contract just came in on a hundred and thirty million credits’ worth of pleasure yacht.”
“An open contract?”
“Sort of. The contract was sent to just us and Loritt’s crew. None of the others.”
Soolie threw his head back and cackled. “Word’s getting out. We’re back in the race. Where is this yacht?”
“Outbound from Junktion.” Rirez consulted his tablet. “Left two larims ago, but it’s still in intercept range.”
“Oh, this is too perfect.” Soolie absently rubbed his fin. “Loritt’s pinned down in his slip, and we’re the only other crew that knows about it. Like taking sweets from a hatchling. Get everyone down to the Buzzmouth and get it ready to cast off. We’re going to go poach a contract.”
“You coming, too, Fin?”
“Wouldn’t miss it for a barrel of Ish caviar.”
“But we can buy lots of barrels of Ish caviar with thirteen million credits.”
“It’s a figure of speech, Rirez. What’s the matter with you today?”
* * *
Loritt sat on his couch sipping a lovely green Eperon, his windows playing a split screen of two different camera feeds: one from his private slip where the Towed was docked, and the other coming from a distributed array of hundreds of dust-grain-sized cameras Hashin had just spread around the slip of Soolie’s new mystery ship.
Insidious little devices, each networked together, they all saw a tiny slice of the action, which was then bundled up and stitched together by powerful software to render a complete imaging of their surroundings. Some would get swept away, some would be defective, but with so many, there would be enough to keep filming until their nanoscale batteries ran out in a few days.
The scene they painted was beautiful. Members of Soolie’s crew furiously prepping their new acquisition for launch, just
as he’d planned. Loritt’s appreciation for the masterpiece only grew as Soolie himself arrived in frame. The tiny cameras lacked audio capture, but a different set of software provided a lipreading service. That had not been a cheap purchase, but as subtitles rolled across the display below whomever was speaking, along with a percentage score of the program’s confidence of accuracy, Loritt felt the expense had been justified.
We ready to launch? Soolie said.
Almost, Fin, his consigliere answered. We just need to load up the last of the emergency provisions.
What provisions?
Food, water, medical suppl—
Forget ’em. We’re only going to be gone for six karking hours.
But no ship is supposed to—
I said forget ’em! We’re wasting time, and the asset gets farther away with every rakim. Where’s Loritt’s crew?
The consigliere held up a tablet. Remarkably, Loritt’s tiny cameras had enough resolution to clearly make out what was on the screen: a feed from the Towed’s private slip.
They’re just boarding now.
Excellent. I can’t wait to see their faces as they walk off.
What if they don’t notice it in time?
Soolie laughed. Then they deserve to blow up.
Loritt smiled thinly. “Thanks for clearing my conscience, old friend.” He’d assumed Soolie’s gang had his ship under surveillance, either electronically or through good old eyeballs. It’s why he’d had his people run a mock checklist and board the Towed in the first place. If they didn’t, Soolie would want to know why they weren’t racing off to collect the payday.
But he hadn’t expected to get a recording of the actual feed coming from Soolie’s own spy camera. With it, they could trace back the viewing angle and find the camera. Today just kept getting sweeter. But the real fireworks were yet to come.
* * *
“C’mon, let’s gooooo!” Soolie shouted from his captain’s chair. It was very nice, upholstered in Terekite suede and mounted on a telescoping base that put him head and shoulders above the rest of the seats in the command cave. His people, still acclimating to the demands of spacemanship, struggled to oblige his order, but eventually, the Buzzmouth was warmed up and falling out of its slip.
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