Easy Money, Part 1
Nobody who saw the man and woman waiting for the elevator doors to open would have guessed they were a starship's bridge crew. Spacers, maybe; they both had the close-cropped hair of anybody who spent a goodly chunk of their life working in null-G, they both wore transparent general-purpose SmartGoggles™. Their clothes, light and close-fitting, were the kind worn by people who didn't need them for warmth but did need them to not get in the way of whatever they were doing. He wore a jacket; like the rest of his clothes it was a dark gray that matched the dull metal corridor nicely. Her gray slacks and sleeveless white T weren't exactly eye-catching either, but she'd found ways to sneak some color into her appearance, like the turquoise ear studs that matched her eyes, or the green band of he watch on her left wrist.
The guy didn't look like a First Mate; he looked more like he ought to be part of somebody's security. A small thirty-two-year-old man, Vu Morgan -- Sergeant Vu Morgan, as recently as two years ago -- moved like a panther, poised and smooth. His body spoke of lean efficiency, with nary a useless kilo to be seen. Like most people, Morg's ancestry was an wild blend of almost every subset of humanity produced by Mother Earth; his ethnicity could only be described as "vaguely dark-ish."
The woman was made from genetic soup every bit as puréed as Morg's, yet through some bizarre chromosomal quirk had a distinctly Caucasian look to her. Her hair had been naturally blond since birth. A lightly-built 5'1", Captain Odrida Chan still got carded in bars even though she was twenty-seven. She usually got shocked looks when she revealed that she was licensed to pilot something with fusion engines, and often joked that one of these days, revealing that she actually owned such a craft was going to give somebody a heart attack.
The would-be clients she'd just met, for instance, had seemed to think Morg was using his kid sister to pull some sort of a prank. But that had nothing to do why Odrida had shut the interview down before the five-minute mark and stormed out of the room in a foul mood.
"Why is it," she snarled as the elevator doors dinged open, "that people assume owning a spaceship makes me a smuggler?"
Morg stepped into the elevator with her and shrugged. "Cultural stereotype," he said. "Part of the mythic allure of Living On The Edge." He pressed the button marked "C." "Living by your own rules, scoffing at The Man, and The Corps, and all Their oppressive bullshit laws, that stuff."
Odrida snorted as the elevator rose, taking them from the depths of the deep-space station called "Kane Micro" to its beating commercial heart. "I can scoff with the best of 'em, but you know what? I actually like some of those oppressive bullshit laws. I dig the ones making it illegal to transport and sell addictive home-brewed narcotics. It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside when I bunk down for the night and say to myself 'Today, I didn't help any of my sibling sentients fry their central nervous system into something resembling bacon.'"
"Mmm," Morg deadpanned. "Brain bacon."
Odrida scowled at him for a moment before she burst out laughing. Morg kept his face impassive, but smiled on the inside. Odrida was a good captain and a sweet kid; he liked hearing her laugh.
She sighed and shook her head. "Goddamn. I shoulda known better than to head back towards the Core," she said, referring to the paying passenger responsible for bringing them this port, which had sold its name to Kane Microtechnology. Kane Micro was a sleazy jump station standing sentinel over an elephant hole just a few hops from Mother Earth. "No room for us legit small-timers."
The doors opened, revealing throngs of people milling about the shops and restaurants of the Kane Micro's spacious underlit two-level concourse, all of them basking in the breathable air and 0.8 G's provided by the station's artificial gravity generators. Before Morg and Odrida got out, two people shoved their way in. Morg's reflexes put his hand on the pistol in his pocket before his conscious mind identified the newcomers as merely a hetero couple who had gone beyond "public display of affection" and were well into "foreplay." Based on his close-fitting utilitarian slacks and sleeveless T, Morg guessed the guy was a merchant spacer enjoying a bit of leave. Based on her conspicuous lack of anything that would pass for clothing in polite society, he guessed the gal was working.
"Not much room for legit anything here," he said as he and Odrida left the elevator. Nobody else seemed to be paying any attention to the brazenly illegal business transaction being consummated behind them as the doors closed. "This is the single most corrupt space station I've ever seen."
He thought Odrida would head for the Trade Authority office to renew their search, but instead she led them along the concourse. They passed a man hawking rocks and shiny bits of metal, all of which he proclaimed to be genuine alien artifacts. Morg glanced at fragrant food stalls selling innumerable varieties of heavily-adulterated algae; one claimed to be selling actual meat! (Actually, Morg didn't doubt the claim; he merely doubted the meat had come from anything that wasn't a rodent.) They passed an electronics store that boasted of having the lowest prices anywhere in human-settled space. (Morg didn't doubt that claim either, given that most of the merchandise had probably "fallen off the back of a spaceship.") Two spacers, a heavy-set woman and a willowy girl barely out of her teens, were getting matching tattoos -- sunbursts, perhaps -- in the front of a body art salon. A tall, fragile-looking Rovnian trader, surrounded by a retinue of human bodyguards, strode down the other side of the concourse, his angular blue face half-hidden behind the mask that provided the methane he needed to breathe. Several travelers gaped openly at the alien, but the experienced spacers had already seen Star Gypsies before.
Odrida led him to the public observation deck where they joined the dozens of people -- all of them tourists -- staring into space. The stars burned brilliantly; Izzy, their Engineer's Mate, had once called them "the candles in God's cathedral." A blue light flickered as yet another starship's jump drive tore a hole through the elephant hole -- or "Class A Spatial Distortion," if you wanted to be technical -- that was Kane Micro's raison d'etre. Morg could have called-up the name of the departing ship on his SmartGoggles™, but knew he didn't have to.
"Who was it?" he asked.
"Zucher Industries Transit Vessel #153024," Odrida said. Morg knew his captain; before she'd even stepped onto the platform, she'd subvocally instructed the tiny computer in her goggles to overlay the realtime display with the names of the vessels visible from the platform -- coming, going, or patiently waiting for their turn to dive through the hole. "Sponsored by Mrs. Mike's Potato Chips. Hauling medical supplies and 'luxury foodstuffs' to Boggard's World. They've got a long ways to go."
"God speed, fellas," Morg muttered. Becoming a commercial spacer had made him strangely romantic about the breed in general.
Then again, maybe that was just because of Odrida. She was a bad influence that way.
"We've got a long way to go, too," Odrida said, turning towards him. The light from the inside of her goggles flickered off her eyes. "Only we don't know where the hell we're going. You got any ideas?"
Morg shrugged, putting his hands in the pockets of his jacket. "We could dead-head. Hit the Net, see if anyplace looks hot for people like us and just eat the transit cost."
Odrida scowled. "That's what I'm thinking, too. But I don't like it. Our margins are thin enough as it is. Maybe we could--"
Morg's wristwatch buzzed. "Incoming," he said, tapping a button to see who was calling. "It's Ham. Mind if I take this?"
"Go ahead," she said.
Morg pulled an earpiece off his goggles and tucked in in an ear before tapping another button on his wrist; a small square screen opened on the inside of his goggles, showing the bald, wrinkled head of Chief Engineer Muhammad Scarpazi. "Morgan here."
"Mayberry Mitch making her twelve-hour check-in call," Ham said. "I am pleased to report that the source of our meager income has not been attacked by pirates, aliens, cops, or similar undesirables, nor has the Double-M Ranch seen fit to blow the fuck up since we last spoke." Ham was stuck babysitting Odrida's starship, Mayberry Mitch, currently parked about forty kilometers from Kane Micro; there had been no reason to spring for a costly docking berth. "How's life on-station? We employed yet?"
"Negative," Morg said. "All leads have been either too dangerous, too illegal, or both."
"Goddammitalltohell. Any chance you guys are going to get sick of it, spring for a shuttle back here, and let me get some R&R? I've been locked in this beer can too long. I've got some misspent youth I need to relive."
"Up to the captain, but we're not through yet," Morg said, wondering if he should needle Ham a bit. "Dunno if this place would be a good match for someone of your seniority," he said, giving in to temptation. "I mean, are you sure you'd be up to it?" He glanced at Odrida who was pretending to ignore the conversation but grinning just the same.
"Goddamn right I am," Ham shot back. "'Kassandra's Fireplace' in the redlight has girls that could get a rise out of cooked spaghetti."
"That's an image I didn't need, Ham."
"Hey, I know damn well you've been checking-out my junk."
"Sorry to disappoint you, but I like my men with fewer miles," Morg said. Odrida suppressed a laugh, turning it into a snort.
"If you ever have to do without for as long as I've had to, I guarantee my wrinkly old ass is going to start looking 'refined' and 'distinguished.' Shit, you might even go for the captain!"
"Ham, there's no such thing as 'situational heterosexuality.'" Morg looked for Odrida's reaction, but she was no longer listening. She was putting a bud in her own ear and muttering into her own watch.
"What, haven't you heard?" Ham said. "You're a Godless Pervert, just like the rest of us -- well, except for Izzy. We'll nail anything that moves, remember? Hey, speaking of Mr. Kingdom Of Heaven," Ham said, his voice turning serious, "how's he adapting to this pit of sin and debauchery?"
"Doing fine," Morg said. "He's in the Green Comet, catching up on his TV. Or reading his Bible." Actually, he wasn't sure what Izzy was doing, only where he was doing it.
"Morg," Ham said, "are you telling me you left Isambard Kingdom Of Heaven alone in a bar on Kane Micro?! Are you out of your fucking mind?"
"He was bored. What could happen? He's under orders to stay put until we say different. He doesn't have much money to be swindled out of, he's not going to be chasing ass or going on a bender, he doesn't start fights, guys looking to pick fights don't pick them with guys who are six-foot-six and built like an anatomy chart ..."
Ham muttered something unintelligible. "Please keep a closer eye on the boy," he said. "Remember the last time we were a three-man crew? Remember how much ass that sucked?"
"And here I didn't think you cared."
"Hey, he's a pious dumb-ass, but he's my pious dumb-ass. Besides, he's good at moving heavy stuff."
"I'll pass along your regards when we see him."
Odrida had hung up and was making a quick throat-slash gesture at Morg.
"Captain wants a word," Morg said. "Morgan out."
"Mayberry Mitch out."
The image of Ham vanished. "Status?" Morg asked, taking the bud out of his ear and re-attaching it to his goggles.
"That was Izzy," Odrida said.
"Trouble?"
"No. It's much stranger than that."
Morg raised a questioning eyebrow.
"Izzy thinks he has a job lined-up for us."
Odrida paused while Morg absorbed the information. The most recent addition to Mayberry Mitch's crew, Isambard Kingdom Of Heaven was born and raised in a small colony of Christian "back-to-basics" fanatics who either didn't notice or didn't mind the irony that their attempt to recapture the low-tech simple life of a bygone era was taking place in an airtight habitat orbiting a star millions of miles from Earth. Ham called them the "Interstellar Amish," despite the fact that their theological roots were closer to American evangelicalism -- not that Morg understood the difference. Izzy had been away from that environment for all of three months, almost all of them spent learning his new job on board Mitch. Izzy was "naïve" the way stars were "slightly warm."
And yet, he thought he'd found them a job in one of the sleaziest places Morg had ever seen.
"The mind reels in terror at the possibilities," Odrida said, summing up Morg's thoughts nicely.
"Shall we meet this mystery client?"
"Depends," Odrida said. "Your gun loaded?"
"Always."
"Then let's roll."
