Easy Money, Part 7
Having a gun pointed at your head, Ham decided, was a hell of a lot like sex; every new partner was a different experience. Staring up the barrel of a weapon held with cool professional scorn by an irritated cop was completely different than the livid fury of a dockworker who thought you were getting to know his girlfriend a little too well.
But this ... this, was a new experience. Crouched down in a pile of expensive clothes and even more expensive drugs, Ham was staring up at an armed junkie slut -- who, ironically, he'd very much wanted to bone -- pissed at him for violating her privacy.
Her hand shook slightly, though he couldn't say if it was from nerves or drugs. On the plus side, if she did shoot, she was less likely to hit where she was aiming. But on the minus, a twitchy hand meant a twitchy trigger finger, and firing a gun in a small spaceship was always a Bad Thing. The Badness Magnitude depended on what kind of ammo she was packing; frangible loads would just put a good-sized dent in the wall, but armor-piercing rounds could breach the hull.
Based on her planning skills thus far, Ham guessed he'd soon be looking for ways to plug multiple bullet-sized leaks.
And then there was the teensy matter of Odrida suddenly hitting the emergency lights, kicking the ship up to a half-gee, and telling him to search the room ...
Oh, yeah. Major Badness was afoot.
"Layne!" Merideth shouted, walking around the bed dominating the room to get a clearer look at Ham. "Get in here! This old fucker was going through our stuff!" Her face was twisted in anger; it was the first time he'd seen her wear an expression that wasn't either petulant or drug-induced.
Layne stuck his head in through the open hatch to Mitch's central shaft. "Huh?" he said, giggling.
Merideth rolled her eyes. "For chrissake ... something's going on, sweets. I need you to come down."
With her free hand, she pulled something out of her purse and tossed it to Layne, who had entered the cabin. For a moment, Ham toyed with the idea of making a move while her attention was divided, but the little bitch was fifty years younger than him, easy; if she wasn't completely baked, her reflexes were probably way better than his.
Layne took the little black whatsit Merideth had thrown him and pushed it to his neck. It made a soft hissing sound.
"What's going on?" she asked, gesturing at Ham with the gun. "Why are you in our shit?"
"Why the fuck did you bring all these drugs on-board?" Ham asked. His knees were sore from crouching, even in the half-gravity of the ship's acceleration, but he was afraid standing might get him shot.
"Why do you think?" Layne asked, already looking markedly less stoned. "Buy low, sell high, dumb-ass! Business!"
"And you haven't answered the question!" Merideth shouted, taking a step towards him. "Why are you opening our shit!?"
"Captain's orders," Morg said from the open hatch.
Layne jumped. Merideth whipped the gun around to cover him.
Elation at the arrival of the cavalry quickly turned to despair; Ham expected to see Morg pointing one of his many weapons at Merideth. Instead, he was standing in the hatch with his hands raised; the junkie slut was still the only armed person in the cabin.
Way to go, you fucking idiot. Your quarters were on the way -- couldn't you have grabbed a gun?
"Get in here!" Layne said. "What's going on? And where are the other two, the dumb one and the stuck-up blond bitch? Get them here, too!"
"Izzy's in the engine room," Ham said, a surprise burst of anger shooting through him. "And he's not dumb. He's just superstitious and under-trained." Nobody picks on my staff but me.
"Captain Chan," Morg said, "is on the bridge. Which is where you want her, given that we're fleeing a bunch of pissed-off smugglers."
Merideth gaped. "No fucking way!"
"Odrida wanted to see if they had any reason to be pissed at us," Morg said, perfectly calm as he nodded towards Ham. "Looks like they do."
"You --" Layne spluttered. "You sold us out! You told them!"
"That'd be a neat trick," Ham snapped, "seeing as we only just now found out you're using us as pack mules."
"You weren't careful," Morg said. "You said the wrong thing, trusted the wrong person. The Cartel got wind. And they're not happy."
"That's bullshit!" Layne said. "Nobody knew anything! We were careful! We're smart!"
Based on the expression on her face, Merideth didn't seem nearly as certain as her beau. "Fuck it," she said. "They're here, sweets, that's all that matters. So, what are you guys going to do about it? This is a fast little ship, right? You can outrun them?"
Morg shrugged. "Maybe, maybe not. You've really put us in a bind, here; we can't go calling for help, we can't outfight them. Maybe we can outrun them, but why should we try?"
Layne spluttered something incoherent while Merideth stepped around the bed towards Morg, pointing her gun at his face. "Because they'll kill you, fucktard!" she shouted. "You got that? Like it or not, we're in this together! You gotta save our asses if you want to save your own!"
"You're standing very close to me, Merideth," Morg said.
And Ham's stomach lurched as the gravity vanished.
Everything seemed to move in slow motion as Ham recalled something he'd once read about hand-to-hand combat in zero-G. Back before spaceflight had been a career, back when it was mostly just speculation, people had believed that a fistfight in freefall was pure futility, that Newton's laws of physics -- particularly the bit about every action having an equal and opposite reaction -- would turn any attempt to strike another person into ineffectual tumbling slapstick.
Those were the days, of course, before the military had been in space. The Marines, and others like them, had demonstrated that when both combatants were trained to deliver precise strikes and compensate for the consequences, physical violence was not only possible but actually beautiful, in a twisted Bruce-Lee-Wire-Fu-On-Amphetamines kind of way. It was art.
They'd been right about fights between untrained combatants, though; with everybody flailing end over end with every punch they threw, it was indeed high comedy.
Morg, a combat veteran who got run-out of the Marine Corps because he was gay, was trained.
Merideth, a stoner-turned-drug-smuggler with a gun, was not trained.
And a zero-G brawl where only one guy knew what he was doing was neither art nor comedy; it was tragedy.
The muscles in Merideth's arm, compensating for the weight of a weapon that was suddenly weightless, jerked the gun upwards the moment the gravity vanished. Before she could pull the trigger, Morg smashed her face with an open-hand strike; blood sprayed from her nose, the droplets turning into perfect crimson spheres floating in the cabin.
Morg yanked the gun out of her hand as the two of them spun away from each other, righting himself against the one wall while Merideth banged her head against the one near Ham.
"You fucker ass son of an douche!" Layne screamed, fumbling what looked like a small gun out of his pants pocket.
Morg launched himself from the wall and transferred his momentum to Layne in the form of a forearm shot to his throat. Layne gagged and began flailing his arms. Morg grabbed the small gun; when Layne refused to let go immediately, Morg yanked Layne's arm straight and smashed his knee into it, bending it about 45 degrees the wrong way.
Layne screamed and let go of the gun. Morg plucked it out of the air like a frog catching a fly.
"Cabin secure," Morg said. Odrida, who had apparently been listening, kicked the engines back on.
Veteran spacers, both Morg and Ham landed on their feet. A howling Layne and gasping Merideth landed in heaps, her blood splattering on what was once again the cabin's grated metal floor.
Morg tossed Merideth's gun to Ham. "If she tries anything," he said, tucking Layne's gun into the waist of his slacks, "blow her goddamn head off."
Ham aimed the gun at Merideth, lying huddled on the floor. "Not so tough when you're ..." He began, trailing off when she looked up at him, her face spattered with her own blood, her blue eyes filled with tears of pain.
Goddammitalltohell. Junkie whore had put a gun to his head -- on his own motherfucking ship, no less! -- and now he was feeling sorry for her?
"What the fuck just happened?" Layne screamed. "What the hell was that?"
Ah, good old Layne. Impossible to feel sorry for Layne.
"That," Ham said, not taking his eyes off Merideth, "is why you do not fuck with the Interstellar Marines." Not even queer ones. Holy hell, that was impressive ...
Ham heard more than saw Morg get Layne back to his feet. Using his freshly-hyperextended arm to prod him along, Morg guided Layne to the corner where Merideth sat and shoved him to the floor.
"They bring any bondage gear?" Morg asked, searching the two of them for weapons. "Handcuffs or anything?"
"Yeah, but nothing we can use," Ham said. "The cuffs are just for play; they have a safety release on them."
Morg stopped patting Layne and turned to stare at Ham, raising his eyebrows in question.
"What?" Ham asked. "You get your jollies your way, I'll get 'em mine."
"Whud habbens next?" Merideth asked.
"Not my call," Morg said. Not having found any weapons, he stood up and walked to a supply cabinet built into the wall. "Captain decides." He opened the cabinet and pulled out a roll of bandages; the "guest room" doubled as the sick bay when the need arose.
"But me?" he continued, tossing the bandages into Merideth's lap, "I'd chuck both your asses out the airlock."
Layne's eyes widened with fear. "Fuck you!" he shouted, clutching his injured arm to his chest. "You wouldn't do that! That's ... no! Fuck you, motherfucker!"
"There's a shipful of angry smugglers out there," he said, returning to the hatch, "and I'm better with the railgun than Odrida. You got this covered, Ham?"
Ham nodded.
Morg stepped outside and started back up the ladder up Mitch's central shaft.
"He's ..." Layne spluttered. "He's kidding, right? Motherfucker! He wouldn't --"
"Weren't you listening, dumbshit?" Ham said. "Not his call. The Captain -- you know, the 'stuck-up blond bitch' -- gets to decide."
"Whuddo you tink she'll do?" Merideth asked, holding a wad of bandages to her nose.
"Damned if I know," Ham said. "This is the first time anybody's ever suckered her into becoming a drug smuggler.
"But given how much she loves this ship and how much she loves flying it, and given that you assholes have endangered her ship and the lives of everybody on board it, and that even if we get by your buddies out there you've made her an accessory to a crime severe enough to get her license yanked, her ship confiscated, and her ass tossed in prison ... let's just say I'm glad I'm not either of you right now."
