The Callisto Gambit (24 page)

“Right. Jovian space is packed with trucks of every class known to the UN, and some unknown ones. I can see pirate rigs out there. Military surplus. These are the guys who’ve hit more Belter colonies in the last month or two than the PLAN ever did. And it looks like they’re using Callisto as a resupply station. Could they try and board me? It would be trivially easy. Someone needs to stay here to keep the lights on.”

Petruzzelli cracked her knuckles. “You’ve got a hypervelocity coil gun.”

“I don’t want to
vaporize
anyone, Alicia. I just want to not be boarded.”

No one ever called Petruzzelli by her first name except Jun. She flushed to the roots of her inch-long hair and said, “I still want to go.”

Mendoza threw his rucksack away from him. “All right. I’ll stay here.”

“John,” Elfrida cried.

“No, it’s better if I stay. Petruzzelli’s the pilot. She can fly the Superlifter, and I’ll stay here to scare off pirates.” His smile looked more like a wince. “I’d just slow you down, anyway.”

★

The Superlifter’s cockpit smelled rancid, reminding Elfrida of the days they’d all spent living in here after the fire in the ops module. Fungi speckled the couches. She and Petruzzelli strapped in.

Jun spoke through the cockpit speakers. “I’ve got some results from analysis of Asgard Spaceport’s surveillance logs.”

“You broke into their security system?” Petruzzelli cackled. “Naughty, naughty.” She had a habit of teasing Jun mercilessly whenever he did something that seemed to be at odds with his Christian faith. Elfrida frowned at her, fastening her harness.

“It didn’t take much breaking into,” Jun said. “They aren’t following their own security protocols. You were right, Alicia, UNSA’s standards of professionalism have really fallen off. Anyway, these are just feeds from cameras in the public areas of Asgard City.”

“That sounds like a lot of data,” Elfrida said.

“Yes. I’ve been analyzing it for days. I haven’t found any trace of Kiyoshi. But I did find someone else we know.”

The cockpit, a horseshoe crammed with gimballed crew couches, had a viewport screen in front of the pilot’s couch. This had been displaying the nightside of Callisto. It suddenly changed to a picture of a shifty-looking man in a business suit. He had buttery brown skin and epicanthic folds to his eyes. A pair of gold sunglasses perched on his scruffy black dreadlocks.

Petruzzelli screeched, “Oh my God, that’s Captain Haddock!”

Elfrida did a double take.
“Haddock?
You mean that pirate we kicked off an asteroid in the 4 Vesta sector, three years ago?”

“Yes! Oh my God, since when does he even own a suit and tie?”

It sounded as if Petruzzelli knew Captain Haddock rather better than Elfrida was aware of. “I guess it’s gold rush time for pirates,” Elfrida said, puzzled.

“Yeah. Yeah. Huh!
Haddock!”
Shaking her head, Petruzzelli gestured, manipulating controls that Elfrida—not having a BCI, and having removed her contacts—couldn’t see. The Superlifter’s auxiliary thrusters spun up. Elfrida’s couch thrummed under her.

With a
clunk,
the
Monster’s
keel clamps released the Superlifter. The viewport screen reverted to an optical feed. Elfrida watched the
Monster
shrink into the blackness of space. As ungainly as it was old, the ship resembled a tennis ball and a pingpong ball on a skewer, crowned with a ruff of radiator vanes and a conical cup—that was the drive, powered by a terawatt-class reactor.

Mendoza was in there. Without her contacts, she couldn’t even text him goodbye.

She felt a sudden piercing fear that she’d never see him again. She pushed it away by saying the rosary inside her head. Mendoza had taught her that this was a pretty good PTSD management technique. PTSD, sure she had it. After living through the Big Breakup, who wouldn’t? She just coped with it better than Petruzzelli did.

On their way down to the surface, Jun supplied them with further information about Captain Haddock’s activities. Haddock, his brother, wife, sister-in-law, and son—his long-time partners in crime—were the only members of the
Salvation’s
crew still on Callisto. They were listed as employees of Future Galaxy Enterprises, Inc.

“They hit the trifecta!” Elfrida said. “In the Space Corps, we used to say that if a company uses
Galaxy
or
Universe
in its name, it’s one man and his bot; and if they use
Future,
it’s old-tech. Oh, and
Enterprises
is a dead giveaway for money laundering.”

Jun chuckled. “It looks legit. To the extent that anything on Callisto is legit. Why don’t you try out your glasses? I want to make sure they work.”

While Petruzzelli bantered with Traffic Control, Elfrida put on her glasses and fitted the teensy earbud into her right ear. It was designed not to interfere with her hearing.

“Testing, one, two,” Jun said.

“Copy,” Elfrida said. The transmitter nestled above her right ear picked up her words through induction. It wasn’t sensitive enough to pick up subvocalization. She would have to be one of those rude people wandering around talking to the air.

“I didn’t want to tell Petruzzelli,” Jun said. “She might not react well. But I also spotted someone else at Future Galaxy.”

A picture flashed up on the little HUD screen that Mendoza had built into the lenses.

Elfrida frowned. “Who’s that?”

When Jun told her, she gasped aloud. Fortunately, Petruzzelli didn’t notice. She was busy swearing at Traffic Control.

The Superlifter screamed vertically down to Asgard Spaceport, decelerating so hard that the women’s harnesses cut into their bodies.

★

By the time they found a public toilet and changed into their dirtside clothes, Elfrida was glad Petruzzelli had come with her. They’d had to run a gauntlet of immigration and customs checkpoints. “That was great!” she said, fluffing her dark bob. “When you told that guy from UNSA that you used to be a Gravesfighter pilot, and he was like,
ohshit?
Good to know they still respect Star Force. When the cat’s away, the mice will play … but they’re still afraid of the cat.”

Petruzzelli rubbed her temples. “They sure aren’t afraid of getting fined for advertising. The wifi in here is a mess. I’m getting so many pop-ups, I can hardly see where I’m going.”

“And ninety percent of them are probably scams,” Elfrida said, glad now she didn’t have her contacts in.

“Ninety percent? A hundred percent.”

They walked between stalls cluttering the concourse, through a throng of lost-looking new arrivals who were all stumbling into each other on account of the illegal pop-ups. Elfrida hadn’t been anywhere this crowded since she was last in Rome. The noise also approached Roman levels, amplified by the low roof. There were no other commonalities—Rome did not smell like a gigantic toilet, for instance—but the thought reminded her that she needed to call her parents. And Jennifer Colden, too. She really needed to let her best friend in the Space Corps know she was alive.

As soon as we’ve taken care of this,
she promised herself.

They followed the signs for Westhab, where Future Galaxy Enterprises, Inc., had its head office. Successively lower plazas offered successively grimier vistas. This must once have been a nice neighborhood. Now, idle, dishevelled people sat in groups under the trees, and followed the two women hungrily with their eyes. Earthborn, in a place where almost everyone was spaceborn, Elfrida and Petruzzelli stuck out like sore thumbs. Elfrida averted her gaze from dark, abandoned storefronts. Organix Outerwear … Legacy’s Leather Goods … the shop names spoke of an era of gentility that would never come again, now that half of the Belt had apparently moved in here.

Petruzzelli had a different take. Chuckling, she said, “Looks like Callisto has finally achieved its ambition to become a low-rent copy of Ganymede.”

Jun said in Elfrida’s ear, “It’s not much further. You’re on Westhab 2 now. The office is on Westhab 4.”

A few minutes later they stood in front of an eight-storey building with a software showroom on the ground floor. In fact, all the buildings surrounding the plaza were part of a single tenement-like structure, built from steel rebar and aerogel flats. The tenants distinguished their sections by decorating them creatively. The Galaxy Enterprises building had a software shop on the ground floor. The rest of its frontage was covered with smartpaper depicting the Milky Way galaxy. Looking at it was like looking through a tall, thin window into the fathomless reaches of space …

… until an actual window opened on the second floor, and someone blew a cloud of cigarette vapor out.

Petruzzelli gripped Elfrida’s arm. “That might be him!”

They scuffled back from the building. Temporary housing had been thrown up here and there on the plaza. Tents, home-printed shacks, even the odd inflatable—the plaza was in mid-transformation into a slum, with crowds to match.

Elfrida and Petruzzelli took cover behind a parked crawler.

“It’s not Kiyoshi,” Jun said in Elfrida’s ear. He had access to surveillance cameras in the roof, which gave him a better view of the window. “It’s the individual listed as the CEO of Future Galaxy Enterprises. Colin Wetherall, aged 34, a Callisto native.”

Elfrida relayed this to Petruzzelli. To her surprise, Petruzzelli shushed her. She stood with her back to the crawler, glowering suspiciously.

“What is it?” Elfrida said.

“Someone was following us.”

“What?
Jun, did you see someone following us?”

“No,” Jun said after a moment. “But that doesn’t mean no one was. I can’t monitor all the cameras in real time, or they’d notice their satellite bandwidth disappearing.”

“What did they look like, Petruzzelli?”

“Two. Man and woman. Earthborn. The woman was European and the man was maybe Indian? I only saw them for a minute, when we turned around. They played it casual, strolled off in different directions. But I caught the dude’s eye. They were definitely following us.”

“Probably figuring to mug us,” Elfrida shuddered. She lowered her voice. “Have you got your you know what?”

“Sure have,” Petruzzelli said, touching the waistband of her jeans. Her baggy t-shirt hid a short-barrelled projectile thrower, also known, according to Petruzzelli, as a Glock. That had been Petruzzelli’s project to pass the time on the
Monster.
Jun had some great fabbing equipment.

“Well, I guess if you could keep an eye out for potential muggers, Jun,” Elfrida started, when suddenly the crawler behind them beeped. Its lights came on and the door of its cab swung open.

Captain Haddock sauntered towards them, natty in the same suit he’d worn in Jun’s surveillance camera grab, with a different and even flashier tie. His gold sunglasses perched jauntily on his dreads. He was the picture of a blithe snake-oil salesman, until Petruzzelli grabbed him and threw him against the side of the crawler.

“Hello,” she said.

Haddock’s face went a sickly shade of beige. “Urk! Let go! Stop it!
Petruzzelli?
No, that’s impossible. She’s dead!”

Petruzzelli yanked on his tie. “Not talking pirate anymore, Haddock?”

Haddock’s eyes refocused on Petruzzelli’s face. “You’re
not
dead. Blistering barnacles.”

“That’s more like how you used to sound.”

“I may once have amused myself and others by talking pirate, as you put it. But I was
not
a pirate, and I’m not one now.” Haddock clawed at his neck. “You’re choking me!”

Petruzzelli let him go. “You mean, the real pirates have come out of the woodwork, and you can’t compete.”

“Here’s my business card,” Haddock said. “It was nice seeing you again.” He set one foot on the step of the crawler’s cab.

Petruzzelli held him back by the scruff of his jacket. “I turned my wifi connection off. Too many popups, so why don’t you just tell me what’s on your card.”

Haddock wrenched loose and turned back to her. “Future Galaxy Enterprises, Inc. Home construction, remodelling, plumbing, and decontamination strategies. We’re building a new development near here. Two hundred premium homes, all with independent life support and medical-grade air-scrubbing facilities, all pre-funded.” He smirked. “We’ve got a wait-list of buyers on Earth. Can’t dig fast enough to keep them happy. So if you’ll excuse me …”

Elfrida broke in. “But we won the war. Earth is no longer in danger. Who are all these people trying to move to Callisto?”

“People with a lot more money than you,” Haddock said. “And also, better information.” He clearly did not recognize her from their brief encounter three years ago aboard the Vesta Express.

“Scared
people,” Petruzzelli said contemptuously. “Before the Big Breakup, they told everyone Earth was in danger, trying to boost public engagement with the war effort.” Petruzzelli put on a chirpy news curator’s voice. “Then it was all, whoops, never mind! You’re safe! Actually, we’re still invading Mars, because reasons. But don’t worry, the only people who have to die are Star Force grunts! So go back to your happy little lives on Earth …” She dropped the parody voice. “But you can’t put the genie back in the bottle. The Big Breakup has made the threat of planetary annihilation as real as the images on people’s screens.
I’m
not surprised you’ve got buyers.”

Haddock looked her up and down. “What have
you
been doing since we last met?”

“Gravesfighter pilot,” Petruzzelli said.

Haddock’s face registered astonishment. Then, with aplomb, he bowed to her. “We’re in your debt. Thanks to the Big Breakup, Callisto is no longer at risk of orbital bombardment by PLAN fighters. So we’re only digging half as deep as originally planned.”

“That must be a huge cost saving,” Petruzzelli said.

Haddock nodded, oblivious to her bitterness. “Now if you ladies will excuse me …”

“Wait!” Elfrida said. “I still don’t get what all these buyers are thinking.” She was too polite to say,
who would trade life on Earth for THIS?
“I mean, we
won.
There are no more toilet rolls. There’s nothing left of the PLAN except a few computers in a cave under Olympus Mons. It certainly can’t threaten Earth anymore. So what are all these people scared of?”