Easy Money, Part 10
Gravity, for as long as an hour at a time.
Then, no gravity.
A few seconds, and a nudge to one side; a few more seconds, a nudge to the other.
Then, gravity again.
Repeat.
At first, physical and emotional exhaustion had driven Merideth to sleep. Vivid nightmares of falling woke her up, which was when she discovered the goddamn ship had found yet another way to make her life hell.
Getting back to sleep was futile; not only was the jackass in the driver's seat trying to make her puke, the anesthesia had worn-off hours ago. Her nose -- her entire face -- throbbed dully.
On top of it all ... she hated to admit it, but she was detoxing. God damn did she need a hit! Easy Living didn't strap the largest of monkeys to your back, but it came with one, and this one was whining in her ear about how bad she needed a taste. Just a little one ...
She'd contemplated keeping a little stash for herself, but at the time she'd been terrified of what would have happened if anybody had found out. The Captain might not chuck her out for a naked spacewalk, but that enforcer pet of hers ... Jesus. That boy was hard.
It wasn't fair; it was false advertising. Merideth had known her share of Tough Guys and Nasty Girls, and that guy -- Morg, that was his name -- Morg didn't act like a single one of them. No strutting, no swaggering, no bragging about how he was the baddest motherfucker in the room ... and yet, when the time came, he'd kicked her ass before she even realized she was in a fight.
She should have shot the bastard the moment he'd come in the room.
Then again ... a queasy feeling in the pit of her stomach suggested she wouldn't have liked what would have happened next.
"Wrong fucking ship," she muttered to herself in the darkness.
She absentmindedly touched the strap-on splint holding her broken nose straight. The old boy -- Sam? No, Ham -- he'd been all right. She'd expected him to make the most of it, inflict a little free pain; she'd just about shot him, after all. Instead, he'd been a real pro about putting her face back together. His hands had been stronger, steadier than she'd expected.
Unfortunately, her nose was going to have to stay broken for a while; they didn't have any of that bone/cartilage regrowth stuff on-board. "Too dangerous," Ham had said. "Complications from that shit are rare, but they do happen, and ... well, there's a reason the regs insist you only use that it where you can do surgery in a damn hurry."
She got out of bed -- her "bunk," they kept calling it -- slowly, lest the monkey driving the ship do something goofy again. "Lights," she commanded; the room -- "cabin" -- lit up. She changed into some clothes that didn't have her own blood on them, including a lime-green top that was easily the most modest thing these people would have ever seen on her.
She even put on a bra.
Time to drop the slutty bimbo routine. Especially now that Layne was ...
Her heart raced. Her face flushed with anger. Layne.
She's just some dumb-ass whore I picked up on Terra Nova!
She clenched her fists.
Fuck you, Layne. Fuck you with a blowtorch.
And the worst part was, he was absolutely right. She had been a prostitute when she'd met him, and her ticket out of that life had turned to ashes in her hand.
As for dumb-ass ...
She'd thought he loved her. She'd actually thought that pampered, self-absorbed, hyper-indulgent manchild had it in him to love somebody other than himself, that he'd actually meant the sweet things he'd whispered into her ear as he was fucking her.
Which probably made her the biggest dumb-ass since ... that one guy ... who did that really stupid thing.
Christ she needed a hit!
She sat, and waited to stop shaking.
She finally got back up. Time to get back in the game. Life sucked, but whatever came next was going to be defined in large part by a spaceship crew with no reason to be nice to her.
She needed to get on their good side. She could do "friendly."
But first, she needed something to eat.
She opened the door -- the "hatch" -- leading to the ship's central shaft. It was a creepy design feature; when the ship was in free-fall, it was a long tube that could get you pretty much anywhere. But when the ship's engines where on, like now, it was a fifteen-meter vertical deadfall with a ladder built into the side.
For her convenience, the floor hatch irised shut, making it seem as though she was at the very bottom of the shaft. The Captain -- Awd-Rita? -- had assured her that the floor hatches in the central shaft wouldn't suddenly open if you were standing on one of them.
Still, it was an old ship, and old ships malfunctioned. She leaned out from the hatch and pulled herself onto the ladder without touching closed floor hatch ... just the way the ship's crew did, come to think of it.
She climbed up one level to Deck 3 -- easy enough, since she now weighed less than half of what she was used to weighing -- and tapped a panel on her left. The hatch to the dining room -- the "mess" -- slid open.
The Captain, worn and haggard, looked up from the table where she sat eating something.
Merideth's mouth went dry; she didn't want to face this woman. Not yet, at least.
"Sorry," she said from the shaft, another hatch irising shut beneath her feet. "I'll just ... uhm ..."
"Come in," the Captain said, setting her sandwich on the table next to a drink bulb.
It wasn't a request.
Merideth stepped through the hatch and took a seat. Both the table and the chairs around it were affixed to the floor, though the chairs rested in grooves so you could push your self away from or towards the table.
Upon first meeting her, Merideth had thought she looked like a kid -- no older than sixteen, tops. A rich kid playing "Spaceship Captain." But now, her shoulders slumped, her eyes filled with exhaustion, she looked ... not necessarily older, but more mature somehow.
There was no mistaking the woman across the table for a teenager playing make-believe.
"In about three days," she said, "we're going to arrive at Fragemall Video Games. I'm going to refuel. You're going to get the hell off my ship. We're both going to do our best to forget we ever met each other. Am I clear?"
Merideth nodded, but her heart sank. Shit! That smugglers' ship would probably be arriving at the same place. If they spotted her on the station, things could get dangerous.
"Furthermore," the Captain said, "I now regard you as a threat to the safety of my crew and my ship. If I had a brig, I'd lock you in it. If your quarters had a toilet, I'd confine you to them. As it is, I have to settle for re-iterating that you are restricted to Deck 4 Starboard and your Deck 3. If I catch you in any other portion of my vessel, I will assume that you are trying to do something criminal, dangerous, and stupid, and will take whatever action I deem necessary to ensure that the rest of the trip proceeds without incident.
"In addition, there are microcameras scattered throughout this ship. Under normal conditions, they are kept inactive. These are not normal conditions. You are going to be monitored at all times by whoever is on the bridge."
Merideth's anger flared a bit, but she kept it from reaching her face. "I don't mean to complain, Audra ... Od ... "
"Captain Chan."
"Yes. I don't mean to ... that's really an invasion of my privacy, don't you think?"
"Modesty?" The Captain said, raising incredulous eyebrows. "Honey, what do you have that you haven't flashed at us a half-dozen times?"
Okay. Captain was still royally pissed at her. Finding her good side was going to take some effort.
Gravity vanished.
Merideth yelped and grabbed the table. The Captain caught her sandwich and drink as they floated off the table but otherwise didn't seem to notice.
"What the hell is that?" Merideth said, feeling the familiar tug to one side.
"Ham's popping Crazy Ivans at random intervals."
"Huh?"
Another tug.
"Back on Earth," the Captain said, "Back in the Twentieth, when America and Russia were having their four-decade pissing contest, back when being in the navy meant you were in danger of drowning and not asphyxiating, they used to have these things called submarines. Ships that could go underwater."
Gravity returned.
"Now as it happened," the Captain continued, "there wound up being a whole shitload of cat-and-mouse stuff going on -- mostly American subs following Russian subs. And subs -- like spaceships -- have a blind spot right behind them, where your propulsion screws with your sensors too bad for you to see what's back there. The Americans loved to try and sneak into that blind spot and ride it; if they did it right, Russians didn't even know they were there.
"'Course, the Russians hated that shit. So to deal with it, they had this trick where the captain would kill the engines and kick the sub to one side. Meaning the blind spot is suddenly pointed somewhere else, and you can hopefully get a look at whoever -- if anyone -- is behind you. Americans called it 'Crazy Ivan.'"
"You're worried that other ship might be following us?"
The Captain shook her head. "We watched them pick up your 'boyfriend' and lay in a course for Fragemall that stays well clear of us; we'll beat 'em there by a day, minimum. But, I'm gonna guess that they have more than one ship, and the worry is that they might send one of those other ships after us. Something small, fast, and well-armed."
"Oh, God ... have they?"
"So far, all is well. But when you're dealing with career criminals," she said, giving Merideth a hard look, "you just never know."
Merideth swallowed. "Look I ... I know you don't exactly owe me any favors ..."
"Bitch, you have no idea how much I don't owe you."
"I mean ... you said it yourself, they're unpredictable and violent, right? What happens if one of them spots me on Fragemall after you drop me off?"
"Then you should buy yourself a ticket to someplace else before that happens."
"Yeah, but ... but I'm only going to have one day!"
"Then buy it fast."
"You know, technically, we did book passage all the way to Earth ..."
Captain Chan gave her a long, hard stare until Merideth looked away.
"Did you ever wonder," the Captain finally said, "why my ship is named Mayberry Mitch?"
Merideth shook her head. "I figured it was a movie or a show or something I hadn't heard of. I mean, that's why corps buy advertising, right? Get you to hear about stuff?"
"It isn't advertising," the Captain said. "I own the naming rights to my ship. And I named it Mayberry Mitch."
Merideth gaped. "Holy ... is that even legal?"
The Captain nodded. "Tell me, have you ever heard of a place called Mayberry Centauri?"
"I think so," Merideth said. "It was ... a hab or something, wasn't it? Got blown-up by a freak meteor hit five years ago?"
"Not exactly," the Captain said. "It was punctured, and lost all its air. It didn't explode, but it was destroyed, just the same."
"So ... you knew somebody in Mayberry Centauri? Somebody who died there?"
"I knew a lot of somebodies in Mayberry Centauri," the Captain said. "All my friends, all my family, everybody in the galaxy I knew and gave a shit about. With a tiny handful of exceptions, all of them are dead now. Mitch Rodriguez is not one of those exceptions."
Merideth gasped. "You lived ... were you ... when it happened, were you there?"
Captain Chan nodded.
"How ...?"
"The thing about Mayberry Centauri that nobody ever mentions," the Captain said, ignoring the question, "is that it was a slum. A pretty, shiny slum with a tolerable crime rate, but a slum. We had a small population of rich twits living along the rim where they could have their nifty 'outer space houses,' but the rest of us were dirt poor.
"You know what my dream was? Save up enough tip money for a ticket. Just one ticket to someplace else, anyplace else, so I could see something other than the inside of that gigantic snowglobe before I died. I used to dream about it, dreamed of doing one of those Earth Tours, or seeing a sunrise through the rings of Zion, or exploring the ruins on New Tuscany. I used to stay up late thinking about this shit. That was my dream -- get away, just once.
"Then the 'incident' happened. When it was over, I was one of the very few people still alive. My world, my entire goddamn world, was gone along with everybody in it, but I was still alive.
"I signed on with the Coast Guard. I had absolutely none of the skills they look for, but I made some friends on the ship that pulled me out, and they pulled some strings. And I thought that, that was the shit, man. I spent most of my time in deep space, but so what? I was doing it. I wasn't in a cage any more; I was Rocket Girl, streaking across the galaxy. Or the human-settled sliver of it, at any rate.
"But then ... two years into my stint, I get word that AstralHab -- the corp that owned Mayberry Centauri -- had reached a settlement with the survivors. A big settlement.
"A settlement so large that I could buy my very own spaceship."
Merideth stared. She'd taken this woman for some kind of spoiled rich brat ...!
"I want you to understand," she continued when Merideth said nothing, "what would have happened to me if I'd gotten busted with your drugs. They would have taken my ship. Then, they would have tossed me in a cell for a very long time. And after I got out, I'd be back to waiting tables; after all, who wants to hire a spacer who did time for running drugs? Assholes like that are trouble; you don't want them in your crew.
"You and your retard beau did more than merely try to get me killed or arrested. The two of you tried to strip my dream from me -- a dream I'm living because a negligent corp killed damn near everybody I ever knew.
"So when casually spout off how you know I don't owe you any favors, I want you to know precisely how right you are."
Merideth sat in shamed silence while the Captain finished her sandwich.
"Now if you'll excuse me," the Captain finally said, getting up, "this hasn't been the worst day of my life, but it's still sucked a whole lot. I need to slam the door on it with a solid eight hours in my bunk."
"Captain?" Merideth said as the small woman opened the hatch.
Chan's turned her head around.
"I'm sorry," Merideth said. "I'm sorry we got you involved in this. I never thought ... I'm just sorry."
Captain Chan turned back to the hatch but didn't go through it, drumming her fingers on the doorway instead. "You're going to pay me an additional one-thousand dollars."
"I am?" Merideth asked, startled.
"Yes," the Captain said. "If you want to stay with us one hop past Fragemall, it will cost you one thousand dollars. We're going to take the elephant hole to the Lone Wolf system, which has two additional commercial wormholes. I'm going to register a course for the one monitored by the Vatterott Furniture station, but because I'm a waitress pretending to be a starship captain, I'm going to fuck-up and we're going to arrive at Sotachi instead. In addition, our transponder is going to suffer a malfunction almost as soon as we set forth from Fragemall.
"Once there, the Trade Authority is going to be pretty annoyed with me. If I can't talk the TA desk monkey at Sotachi out of it, a hefty fine will be levied, particularly in light of the hazard to navigation we present at this very moment by deviating so far from our registered plan. If it costs more than a thousand, I'll cover it. And if it costs less than a thousand ... hell with it. I'm pocketing the difference, because I still don't like you very much.
"Once we hit Sotachi, the whole 'get the hell off my ship' plan is back in force."
"That's ..." Merideth stammered. "I don't know if I have--"
"Don't fuck with me, chicky," Captain Chan snapped. "You're telling me that you're such an honest, scrupulous person that in the entire time you were with Stoner McRichtwit, you never squirreled away any of his money into your account for a rainy day?"
Merideth blushed; she had, but apparently hadn't been aggressive enough about it. "I can cover that."
"Good," Captain Chan said, starting up the shaft. "Make me regret this, and you can get out and walk." With that, the door slid shut.
Merideth -- who was no longer hungry -- stayed seated, her mind reeling under the weight of all the new information.
Okay. So. Captain, way, way, way pissed at her. But willing to cut her some slack. And get her a little further out of harm's way. On the balance, good. Not great, but good.
Cash flow situation ... problematic. That kilobuck was going to bite deeper than she wanted to admit. Shit, Chan was right, she should have bled Layne's account dry when she had the chance, sleazy little horndog. And there was still the matter of relocating herself to someplace that didn't suck, pronto.
So. What was she going to do to raise the money she needed to hit the ground running when they got to Sotachi?
She smacked herself in the head. Duh!
She went back down to her cabin and tapped the intercom panel next to the door. "Bridge."
A brief pause, then an ill-tempered old voice. "Yeah? That you, Merideth?'
"Are you alone?"
"Yeah ..."
"Ham," she said sweetly, "I was wondering if I could interest you in a business proposition ..."
