Angeleyes - eARC (12 page)

I stowed my gear in the locker under my bunk. All three females were in a bunkbay made for four, the men in another, with Juan and Shannon in officer staterooms. There was little privacy, but at least they had a good shower, with jet sprays all around.

They had a hold full of cargo. I figured out a lot of it was supplies for them to use—vacsuits, tools, refined metals for electronic supply. Chemicals for explosives. You’d have to know what you were doing, and it was all tagged for delivery. But I found out by accident later that all the masses were slightly off. They could make stuff disappear and still be on manifest for payload.

I wondered when and where it was going to go, and how they’d keep it hidden. I assumed they had a plan, and there are a number of places you can stow stuff on a ship so it can’t be found without a plate by plate sonar or mmw scan. No, I’m not going to tell you. It varies by ship and I might need to do it again.

There were a handful of small arms aboard, but nothing bigger than a standard rifle. Some were hunting rifles or shotguns, some appeared to have been acquired from terry gangs, and they had stuff from several generations and militaries. I could swear a couple of them were a century and a half old. There was even a revolver, if you’ve ever seen one of those on a history load.

A couple of the rifles were gorgeous. Carved stocks inlaid with engraved metal work. They were high-end hunting pieces. Except, I took a closer look at one, and the engraving wasn’t hand done. They were clones. Still, they were tagged from a supplier, to a receiver, which meant they weren’t really our business, except as cargo. I hoped that would work, and I wondered what they planned to do with them. Or perhaps they were actual cargo. There was so much in cubes, TEUs, pallets, cages and nets I wasn’t sure which was which.

I helped make sure it was all pinned and tied, and went EVA with Roger and Dylan to attach a short cargo train. It wasn’t much, but if we were a tramper, we needed to look like one at least.

“Roger,” I asked.

“Yes, Angie?”

“I assume you have some sort of track of all this.”

“Yup.”

“It’s all bound for destinations?”

“Yes, everything is itemized and billed.”

“Except the bits that are overmass.”

He raised an eyebrow and smiled. “Well, occasional errors do happen. Better to estimate slightly over for mass ratio balancing.”

“Natch,” I agreed.

I didn’t want to know more. They’d already started something.

CHAPTER 14

I still don’t know where that rock was. I think there were at least three, because I talked to other people who’d gone from them to the jump points, and unless some megafast drive was involved, they were all within a few days flight of a Jump Point. Since they were in the outer Halo, not in-system, that meant there had to be multiples.

Mira and Juan dialed up the drive until we were above Grainne G, probably at 135% of Earth G. I had to guess, because I’d never experienced natural E-g, and it had been years since I’d felt G-g. Whatever, we moved at a good clip, and five days later we were in pattern for Jump Point 2 back to Caledonia.

I had a flashback to
Churchill
. I’d crewed on her for two weeks, and served in combat, and I felt crappy for running out on them. Part of it was I knew I was less likely to die here, though more likely to be captured. If I did die, it would be quick. But I wanted to live, and I guess that colored my departure. I wished
Churchill
well. I had no idea at the time what their mission or combat status was.

That was how most of the war was for me, honestly. I wasn’t sure where we were a lot of the time. I didn’t know who the targets specifically were, or what, until after an explosion. We did a lot of running for our lives.

The food was decent enough. Much of it was pre-prep, but Roger and Teresa were both good cooks and switched off with me. I’d figured to be bored in my cubby, but Juan was captain and insisted we run through all the drills—Reactor Overload, Puncture, Dutchman, CO2 Overage, everything. I was brisk enough, but they were very rusty. So we ran through again, and they were spot on. I remember the klaxon sounding for Puncture, and running for the nearest kit. I had the mask on in under eight seconds, per the manual, snugged to my head, and had my hand wrapped through the harness as I snapped that to a stanchion. That helps keep you inboard if an entire plate fails. I turned as I shimmied into the harness properly, and saw the rest were already in four points, adjusting the tension.

After two days of drills and inspection, we fell to and scraped paint, laminate, oxide, checked fasteners and covers, ran resistance tests and photon leak tests on all the cabling, and generally checked her over. Teresa, Jack and Sebastian fixed a few things that were shaky. I felt a lot better when that was done.

After that, Juan wanted unarmed combat and boarding practice. It seemed to make sense. We were combatants, and this was a military transport, though I wasn’t sure what ten of us could do against a real warship.

Still, exercise is good. Or rather, I hate it, but I hate not exercising more. So we pulled tensioners in the hold, under g and under emgee, and Juan had us pair off for unarmed combat.

I was a bit bigger than Teresa, and she was squirmy, but I was stronger. Actually, she was fun to wrestle. I’m not much into women, but she had nice form, and feeling her strain out of my clutch was fun. She got my arm against my neck the next round, and I had to try to scissor her. She was so lithe I got my knees together and it didn’t bother her at all.

After ten minutes of struggling, I had about three points on her. I wanted more practice.

Mohammed, who went by Mo, and Sebastian—Bast— paired off, and I thought they were going to break things. They were big, tough and bounded around the compartment, sort of a 3D sumo or Icelandic wrestle. I was sure some of those impacts hurt, but they only grunted from time to time. After a couple of minutes, Sebastian bent Mo in half over his knee, and Mo tapped out.

After Juan and Roger, I matched up with Mira. She was my size, close enough, though she was a bit taller and I thought I was sturdier and a bit better padded.

She came at me, grabbed, twisted, and she had her arm across my throat while my shoulder was bent in a way it shouldn’t. She leaned in slowly, and when the nerves started firing, I tapped.

That was frightening. It had taken three seconds from contact to disable.

What was terrifying was when she and Shannon paired off and he bent her into a pretzel in under five seconds, her hands out between her thighs and a foot behind her head with his knee across her throat. I’m sure there’s money for that, naked. I just hoped they never got drunk and wanted to slapfight with me. They were insanely strong.

Had I been that out of practice and out of g? Or were they complete unarmed combat bamfs as well as everything else?

I decided I’d get into the gym and work on some muscle groups.

We didn’t have much for repelling boarders. There were plenty of tools to use as melee weapons, and Juan had one stunner. The real guns couldn’t come out except under extreme circumstances. Mostly we practiced depressurizing spaces and pressure-locking hatches. And really, boarder repel is a tradition, but not something that’s ever going to be needed in the real world.

A lot of this was to keep us busy. Commercial ships can be lazy in between. The pay per functional work time is ridiculous, because there’s little to do in between, but people need enough money to take the job. That’s also why most ships have pretty damned good cooks, VR kits, and yattobytes of porn, with either simulacra or paid companions.

This was a poor tramper. We had neither of the last two. I thought about offering services, but it was too small a crew to keep any sort of emotional distance.

The next day, we apparently sent a signal to Jump Point control that we were outbound with cargo. Juan looked really tense in case. I figured the cover story was limited. What had this ship been doing previously? Was there a real crew who might be known? Had they been paid off or killed?

It occurred to me I had no idea at all who these people were, other than “military.” There were rumors of Blazer teams trained for all kinds of barely legal viciousness, and someone on Mtali had wiped out an entire district. That was groundside, though, and these were spacers. Did Space Force have their own Blazers?

Still, I was on their side, and for now, it was a paid job hauling cargo.

Whatever info he’d sent checked out. We queued up, jumped into Caledonia, and took a berthing number to dock and unload cargo.

Five days later we grappled in and started undogging pods and tainers.

Roger said, “If anything odd happens, just ignore it. If you really think something’s out of line, call me first, just a, ‘Hey, Roger!’ Got it?”

“Sure. I’ll be discreet.”

He clapped my shoulder and I got to work.

I lit up my loader, annoyed that it was a -4. Otoh, the others were -2s, way out of date. Mine had a plate from another ship on it, stamped out, with a riveted overplate. I was just happy they were Hevi-6s, not Isorus. Those things are horribly uncomfortable and rough to handle. I pulled the first pallet of chemical pellets and rolled down the ramp.

As I passed through the hatch, someone in gray coveralls and cap jumped up, snagged one of the boxes and pulled. The banding wasn’t as tight as it could be, and it wiggled loose. Then they disappeared back underneath. I looked back at Roger, and he just nodded.

And that’s how someone got hold of some chemicals for explosives. I think.

I’m sure, I know, other stuff went missing. Any time we had an overestimate, either we pulled stuff off, or someone else showed up to sign for it, or just filched it. I don’t think we ever made a delivery where all the numbers matched.

When we were done, Juan asked, “Can you take us somewhere to eat? Anywhere a crew might go after finishing a load and awaiting a new one.”

“Sure, how many?”

“All of us. I’ve contracted with Hallog to patrol the
Pieper
.”

I thought about that. I guess it would help argue against us being criminal, if we’d all leave and let an outside party do that.

“Sure. I guess you want someplace where no one will know you’re not Alsacien?”

He shrugged and said, “
Ça fait rien, Angie, ils ne savent pas quand même
.” I guessed what he meant, and his accent was perfect. Damn.

“Fish dinner?” I asked. “There’s a great salmon and shrimp place a couple of ramps out.”

“Perfect.”

The guard showed up, checked in at the bottom of the ramp, Roger and Mo ran a mesh across the open hatch, Juan locked the pax hatch, and we bounded along the hub. The lead six chattered in French, and I was sure it was real, but that made me more nervous. I knew it was an act, so they were doing something, and it was probably illegal, possibly a war crime, and might get us captured or killed.

There were UN guards at the gate between dock and station. They weren’t tagging people, but they were checking ID. I had the one I’d been handed, and hoped it worked. I assumed so, but I didn’t know. I handed it over and looked bored.

“You’re native here, Ms. leBlanc?” the goon asked. They’d gone with my existing docs and basically cloned them.

“Yes, I am.”

He said, “Your accent’s funny.” He wasn’t even really looking at me when he said it.

“I get it from my mother.”

He looked up. “What, your citizenship or your accent?”

I rolled my eyes and acted as if it was a come on. “Both.”

“So what’s that in your pack?” he said, looking at the screen next to him.

“A lock wrench.”

“What does it lock?”

Damn, this jerkweed was a grounder.

“Airlocks.”

“Okay. It’s just that it’s shaped and massive enough to be a weapon.”

“Yeah, but that would be illegal,” I said. I tried to look clueless.

He seemed completely serious as he said, “That’s why I asked.”

They definitely weren’t sending their better troops. I wondered if he knew his general orders, or if they even had any. I still remembered mine.

Teresa was behind me. The others had split up. We all regrouped and made small talk about, “Here she comes” to avoid comments that would piss off the idiots at the gate.

We bounced down three ramps, g increasing slightly as we went. The first level is all urgent stuff for spacers—transcoms, oxy, power sources, customs agents, stuff like that. The next is really cheap stuff, the third is much better.

The Silvery Catch was at the high end of my budget, just where a lot of crews went to relax after a haul, especially if they had a day or two layover. They had a huge holo of a swordfish over the entrance. It covered an emergency pressure curtain that could deploy down. Most stuff this close to the docks had reinforcement in case of a crash causing a leak.

The server was cute, and I wondered how she got here, because her physique was groundsider, even more than mine. She had a wedge do with blond highlights and was cheerful without being icky.

I do like salmon. I had mine with a teriyaki lime glaze and mushrooms on a bed of rice noodles with broccoli. It was moist, flaky and delicious. I’ve been told that describes me, too. The others chose anything from whiting to buffalo shrimp. Juan and Sebastian ordered chicken.It was good, and we had a couple of drinks each, while Juan, Roger and Dylan swapped jokes in French, and the rest of us spoke English. Mira’s French was pretty good. I understood one word in five when they spoke slowly.

We loped back up to low-g, the booze making us even dizzier. Or at least it made me dizzier. Juan glanced over his locks, signed off on the rentacop’s phone, and we boarded for the night. We had another day and a half before our scheduled slot out, and about empty mass-cube to fill if we could find contracts. We were actually working as a freighter so far.

In case you’re just a groundsider—the primary things shipped between planets are people and luxury goods like gems, foodstuffs that grow in specific environments and original artwork. Most other stuff is cheaper to do with fabricators and transferred files, since you only have to pay for the data once. But if a ship is jumping through, they’re going to charge for data. That market isn’t very expensive, but it depends on how critical the info is on how fast it must be transferred, so there’s some variance in price, and all ships that can take in data right up to Jump, and resend on arrival. Then, some are bonded and Space Material and Data Transfer Accord rated for secrecy.

However, between habitats, all kinds of stuff xfers. There’s a lot less energy involved in near space transit and through the Jump Points. So the stations near them are huge with populations in the hundreds of thousands, and the ones in Sol system actually can have millions, though they’re scattered through linked habitats. The outer systems just run shuttles. Most systems have transfer stations, too, partway between the industry and the point habs.

Once stuff is in space, it tends to stay there, swapped around as needed. Organics, metals from Govannon (everyone deals with Prescot Deep Space), repair parts, tools, and even medicine if it’s faster to ship a nano then get the data and build it yourself.

So right up to the last div or even hour, someone might have a package or shipment they need sent, and pay for it if you have mass-cube left. Then there’s personal documents and digital data.

We had a day and a half. We’d try to max out on that mass-cube and data to make a bit more profit.

I had music, vid, sens and a mostly private berth. We’d dogged tarps up to screen it into cubbies. For very private time the head had a locking shower with interactive holo.

When I overheard Juan and Shannon talk about “Sol system,” I got nervous.

“Is that safe?” I asked.

“Probably not,” Juan said. “What do you know about their Jump Point Three?”

“They’re pretty good at keeping everything patrolled. They tag everyone, even short transients. They also scan all cargo and try to inspect or check bills of lading.”

“Heh,” he said. “You think they scan all cargo.”

“They do.”

“They maintain that image. We’ve proven they don’t.”

“Oh?”

“You can figure it out,” he said. He wasn’t going to tell me. I assumed they’d done this before. So either there were regular smugglers, which was likely, or they’d planned ahead for this war. That was possible, but bothered me.

If we picked up anything special here, I wasn’t aware of it.Cubes, cargotainers, vac-packs. We had a leisurely load to start with, and Roger had a load plan for the intended manifest. I put stuff where he said and let him worry about the thinking.