Archaea (10 page)

“Thanks man, I'll keep looking”, and with that, he wandered off, looking like a giant lost puppy. My partner is back on his station, and gives me the thumbs-down sign. We're never going to get out of this horrible assignment. We're stuck here until we die and the cleaners shove us into bio for reclamation.

*****

Clearly, the big dumb Indian trick worked.  It was a gamble, forcing their attention on me, but people are predictable – when they're looking for something, they almost never see it if it is right in front of them. Now, I was just one of the many gapers wandering around the station, a meaningless scrub. I am not part of their equation, and that means I am free to proceed as planned and no one needs to be dead just yet.

Lock 5 looked like all of the other locks on the station, a ladder leading down to a small staging area, with the ship lock in the center of the floor. It was standard practice to keep the ship's lock closed, in case the station lost pressure.  Unlike the other locks, however, this one had a posted guard, stern faced security types watching the crowd. Their mirror eyes reflecting everything, they stood their post like seasoned pros – which they almost certainly were.

I approached with hands in sight, and after a brief conversation that established who I was and who they were, they motioned me down into the lock. Clearly this was why the eyeballs were posted between here and the closest ingress
tube; these serious faces would spot them before they even got situated. Actually, come to think of it, they were almost certainly spotted anyway, otherwise why would they have warned me in advance?

The ladder led down into a small chamber with recessed lockers in the walls, ceiling and floors, racks for gear, pressure suits, and access hatches to the various mechanicals needed for a pressure lock. The light did the flashing red thing, while the upper hatch was sealed, then the flashing green thing while the ship hatch was opened, and in moments I was looking down into a brightly lit, clean, corporate runabout, all polish and shine – looking like it just came out of the bubble-wrap. A suit with a firm, dry handshake welcomed me aboard, and showed me the way forward to a wardroom.

“You are the bonded independent courier that was contracted to deliver a canister”, a no-face with mirror eyes and slick black hair stated as if he was reading a ship's manifest off of a clipboard.

“I am, sir. I have it right--”

“You were contracted to deliver this canister with all due haste to this station and were expected to arrive a little over three weeks ago. You are late.”

“Yes, sir – my transportation fell through and I am afraid I was stuck on Luna Farside waiting for--”

“You are late. We were expecting you at an earlier time, and this has thrown off our schedule. We are unable to complete the transaction.” No face was delivering this monotone as if it was a mantra, an incantation against interruption, against discussion.

“Sir, I am contracted to deliver this canister, and have arrived at my destination. According to the contract entered in by both parties, I am within my rights to request full payment for services rendered, and complete my delivery as requested.” I knew how to deal with these
gloms; they are all faceless cogs in a vast machine, all working for the common goal of doing the least they can do to get by.

“Our agreement was for a delivery date of three weeks prior to this date. I am not aware of any modification or amendment to this agreement--”

It was my turn to interrupt.

“Sir, pursuant to the contract, I am required to inform you that the delay in delivery was well within agreed on terms, and does not represent a material
default of our agreement. I regret this delay has caused you inconvenience, but I am here to make delivery, and intend to do so at this time”.

I was in no mood to be jerked around by this bunch of suits lounging in their plastiform ship, architected out of a single slab of chromium and crusted with money. I had spent three weeks sleeping in a dank corridor in a dusty, disused, decrepit station orbiting the bad side of a worse moon, with this damned canister that probably held some horrible chemical compound, or lethal biologic.

After having literally fought my way to where I was now, I was leaving here with the credits I was owed, or there were some people here who were going to need new teeth when I was done negotiating.

We sat across the polished gleaming table from each other for a while. I did the stoic, unmovable, mountain-of-angry-indian bit, and they did the passive-smug-corporate-minion routine. Mirror eyes leaned over to his partner and mumbled something, then sat back and relaxed.

“Sir, we respect our arrangement, and are committed to fulfilling our obligations thereof. We are prepared to pay your delivery fees, but the lateness of your delivery has presented us with challenges I am afraid we cannot overcome. We will not be taking delivery of the canister.”

It seemed like a good time to remain passive-aggressive, and remain silent. Sometimes, people are pressured into speaking, in an effort to fill the silence of a one-way conversation. In this, I excel. I am as stoic as they come.

“Our arrangement was to convey the canister you delivered to a ship we had contracted out-system, to a laboratory complex on the fourth planet in the Vega system.”

I have never been as far as Vega, and wasn't aware there were any settlements on Vega 4. I assumed they were referring to some secret outpost or station, some prefab drop-in, but what do I know. It's a big galaxy.

“Unfortunately, our next courier was not able to stand down indefinitely, and raised ship recently, canceling their contract with us.”

While I had originally planned to take this job so I could get to Europa Station, to catch a job of some kind heading out-system, it never occurred to me that this route was just one leg of a longer hop.

“Would you like to extend my contract to deliver this canister to Vega 4? I currently have access to a inter-system frigate that can make the run.”

That wasn't technically a lie. My ruck still sat on my bunk aboard the Archaea, and I was pretty sure the captain would let me come aboard to collect it. I sat back and laced my fingers, becoming a smidgeon more passive, and an iota less aggressive. These suits are hard to read sometimes.

“Your offer is under consideration. Please stand by while we confer with the home office”, mirror-lenses said, and then just sat there, staring my reflection back at me. After a brief delay, another suit looking for all the world like a vat-grown duplicate of the rest of the people on this ship walked in, and whispered in mirror-lens' ear. I sat there and ran through various scenarios in my mind of Captain Smith saying no, and then nope, and shaking his head from side to side while walking away.

I'd dearly hate to be stuck on this station with nothing but this damned canister to keep me company, but if the pay is good, I'll buy it a fancy hat and take it out to dinner someplace nice – not that there's anything on Europa Station you could call nice. Still, I'd be where I meant to be when I took this job.

“We would like to extend your contract to make delivery. Due to the time-sensitive nature of this delivery, a bonus will be granted based on a sliding scale starting in one standard hour from now, with a minimum payment guaranteed on delivery, as per your previous contract. Here are the details of this proposal.” An almost imperceptible gesture and a holo lit up on the table with a document outlining the terms of the new contract. I tried to keep from falling out of my chair at the number of zeros they had attached to the bonus.

Hopefully Captain Smith likes money.

*****

“Are you ready to move out, Jane?” His voice so near to my ear damn near made me leap straight out of my clothes and into his arms.

“You just gave me a coronary, Yak”, I said. “Don't you know it's impolite and dangerous to sneak up on a lady like that?”

I had been daydreaming a bit, thinking about what it would be like to live and work in a place like this, so far from anything.

To tell you the truth, it had a little bit of appeal to me. I like things simple and easy to understand, a routine and a procedure, a daily rigmarole I can lose myself in and just turn off my incessant worry and care over what I am doing next, and where I am going to do it.

“Did you make your delivery Yak?” I asked, looking pointedly at the carry-all he had slung across his neck.

“No, unfortunately. My delay in getting here meant that their connection to the Vega system fell through. They did pay up, as I was under contract and conveyed to them the critical nature of the payment requirement of our agreement.”

“I'll bet!” I laughed. Yak looked like a really sweet, gentle giant, but one that would also have no more concern about pulling off your arm and beating you with it as he might have kicking a bag full of puppies. He'd probably have second thoughts afterward....he's a softie – unlike me. I'd probably beat you with the bag of puppies without even a first thought. Jane Short, lethal at 20 yards with a bag of puppies. The thought had me laughing loud enough to rate a concerned stare from Yak.

“Sorry Yak, just thinking about puppies”, I said. “Let's get a move on then. I need to hunt down a bargain on reactives, or the captain will have me keelhauled.”

As we climbed the escaladder upwards to the hub, he said “Jane, do you know what plans Captain Smith has next?  I haven't had a chance to speak with him at all since we left Darkside.”

“Sorry Yak, I am afraid I really don't. Yesterday we were running final checks and wondering where we'd go next, and today we're here. I know the plan was to move onwards and outwards, and look at picking up work along the way. The captain is probably working on the next leg of our adventure now.” Actually, to be fair, our captain probably had the next three or four stops already planned and paid out.

“Do you think he might be interested in going to Vega?”

“One place is probably as good as anywhere, Yak.” I was getting winded, too much tech work and not enough grunt work in the past months has left me soft and squishy, barely able to keep up with some jarhead on an escaladder.  Thankfully, we were getting closer to the hub and I was starting to get that horrible feeling none of us ever get used to, of starting to fall.

The hub was pretty busy at this time in the station cycle, there were a number of traversers heading down the yellow line, but there were also a number of station workers out as well. We passed a crew abaft of ring 3 that had tigs out welding something. Actually, one poor sod was welding and the other two were fulfilling their roles as general hangers-on. In null-g, that's a literal requirement of their position, and every work crew needs at least a few that are too important to do anything other than spectate.

I was headed to a meeting with a local start-up hoping to get noticed by a glom – but that's the kind of businessperson I want to haggle with. The little guy, trying to make ends meet and hoping to attract a buyout from a glom is motivated to stay in business. There is no business between gloms – there is no haggle. Deals aren't made; they are delivered in accordance with corporate policy at standard places and times as benefits the greater good.

Captain Smith was hoping to get 10 kilos of grade 1 reactives, a hot blend of what our drives needed to run, and enough of it to last a while – if they even had 10 kilos, they wouldn't be letting it go for cheap. I had been ordered to find a good deal though, a direct order from a superior officer – one that I was not prepared to disobey. 

We could run up to grade 10 in the Archaea, of course, the mil-spec gear we had was designed to chew through just about any muck it could get, but it makes sense to spend more when you're feeding a machine that literally safeguards your very existence.

As durable as our equipment may be
, running sludge reactives is just asking for trouble. Just because the military can do it and the equipment is rated for it, doesn't mean it's a good idea. The military has redundant units in hot storage, prepped and ready to drop in, dry dock, scheduled replacements, and entire divisions of engineers to throw at problems like this. For the service, a sludged drive might mean a few days in port somewhere, for us it could mean a cold death somewhere trapped in the endless dark between systems.

Luckily, the person manning the front desk was female. Not that gender had much to do with it, I could haggle anything that lived, walked, swam or crawled – but with Mr. Tall-Dark-And-Handsome gazing down at her with those deep eyes, she'd have probably handed me the keys to her warehouse if he so much as smiled.

Women are so predictable.

*****

With the Archaea safely docked and Pauli off taking to Gene in engineering, I finally had a moment to stretch, to relax a bit and enjoy the diffuse light from Jupiter casting a warm glow throughout the bridge. With nothing flashing red or yellow on my console, the quiet hum of the enviro and the solid push down into my chair were all conspiring to set me up for a little nap. 

This is a good ship, and I've walked on enough decks in my day to know. They just don't build them like this anymore. A modern frigate might spend a month on the assembly line as bots spot-weld prefab stations wrapped in molded plastic – but this ship was made by hand, by real people who took pride in their work. You can tell it was built with care in an era where survivability was mission critical, where parts weren't assembled, they were machined.