The Callisto Gambit (4 page)

“That’s enough,” Brian said. “That’s enough now.”

Michael screamed and wept. He scrambled towards the mecha. Brian blocked his way. He hit and kicked Brian until one of the other men knocked his feet out from under him. After that he lay on the grass, smelling earth where his mecha’s feet had torn up divots. He kicked anyone who tried to approach him. He tore up more grass, ripping his fingernails, not caring.

“He’s got an autism spectrum disorder,” said the distant voice of Kelp. “He has an implant to manage it, but we were on the road for more than four months. I think he’s probably run out of meds.”

“Gotcha.” Another familiar voice, deep and strong. Michael recognized the Voice—the man who’d hailed the
Kharbage Collector
during their approach, telling them to frag off. Now the Voice came closer. “Kid. What do you need? Risperidone, thioridazine, something like that? Lithium? SSRIs?”

Michael realized in the midst of his distress that the question was important. “Lithium,” he choked out. “And clonidine. Just a low dose.”

“Good. We’ve got those.”

Michael peered up through tear-swollen eyes. It was not the promise of meds that diverted him from crying, but the Voice itself. Its owner turned out to be a powerfully built man in late middle age, sitting on his heels beside Michael. He had a spectacular beard and a shaggy mop of hair to match. Nose like an ice hatchet. Shoulders like a pro wrestler. He looked very different from Michael’s father, who was built like a sofa, but an impression of similarity lingered. It was in the voice. Authority—and warmth: the twin characteristics of a man who was always in control.

The man’s dark eyes twinkled, nested in creases above the graying tideline of his beard. “So this is the boy who nearly crashed his spaceship into us … and followed that up by crashing the welcome party for my Caledonians.”

“I want my ship back,” Michael said.

“Yes, that situation needs to be dealt with.” A climactic fanfare of music screeched from the stone building. “I think I can safely miss this party,” the man said wryly.

“Is that building really made of stone?” Michael said.

“Of course not. Aerogel blocks.”

“That’s what I thought.”

The man leaned over and pulled Michael up into a sitting position. Michael scrubbed his face with the heels of his hands. He snuck a glance over the man’s shoulder, and saw his mecha standing under the trees, guarded by several of Brian’s Irishmen. It reassured him to see they hadn’t taken it away.

“Autism is very rare nowadays,” the man said. “Was there some reason your parents didn’t have you fixed before you were born?”

Michael laughed. “I
was
fixed before I was born. They had my IQ enhanced at one of those illegal labs on Ganymede. It turned out to come with side effects. Why do you know about it?”

“I’ve a theory that autism and genius go hand in hand. As a matter of fact, I was diagnosed myself as a child. I grew out of it, but I can still remember what it felt like.”

“Wow.” Michael’s eyes widened. He’d never met anyone else on the spectrum.

“Parents can’t cope with you? Sent you off to school, and then the school kicked you out too?” Michael nodded, and the man nodded with him. “Zygmunt, get my suit,” he called.

Haddock pushed forward. Next to the boss, he looked even more untrustworthy than usual. “If you’ve no objection, sir,” he whined, “we’d like to come with you. Myself and my lad.”

Kelp hung between his mother and uncle, his face an unhealthy shade of beige, his breathing labored. The gravity down here was close to one full gee. Kelp was spaceborn—born and raised in zero-gee, his limbs as long and thin as pieces of string, his head too large for his frail torso. He was in trouble. Michael started forward with a cry of concern.

“Shit!” the boss exclaimed. “What’s that kid doing down here? Brian, are you out of your everloving mind?”

Brian shrugged. “They’re ISA, boss, I’d lay money on it.”

Michael froze at the realization that Brian’s friendliness had been fake.

“You’re obsessed with the ISA,” the boss said. Brian’s face reddened at the public putdown.

Kelp’s condition was urgent. They all hustled back into the chamber. Brian came, too, as did several more Irishmen, toting flechette cannons. The valve closed, cutting off Michael’s view of leafy trees and green fields. He wondered if they were going to be spaced now.

The Information Security Agency of the UN was the most dreaded organization in the solar system, next to the PLAN. It was natural to be scared of the ISA.

But people didn’t normally jump to the conclusion that strangers were ISA agents. Unless they had something to hide …

As the elevator ascended, and the gravity slackened, Kelp recovered. His mother, Coral, hugged him in relief.

Brian said grumpily, “OK, I’ve just checked our visitor logs. You were right, boss; they were here before, three years ago. They may not be working for the ISA. But they’re definitely pirates.”

Captain Haddock blustered, “We’re independent construction workers. Yes, some of the asteroids we developed may not have been ours to develop, technically speaking. But I’m a great believer in freedom of movement and the right to settle wherever a person might want. That’s something you support yourself, sir, as I understand. Regarding the pirate stuff … there’s no law against cosplay, is there?”

Kelp wriggled out of his mother’s embrace. “No, Dad, but I’m sick of it! I’m sick of always being on the wrong side of the law. I’m sick of always having to move. I’m sick of
being
sick because we live in filthy construction shacks full of asteroid dust. I’m sick of playing pirate. And I don’t want to do it anymore.” His gaze fixed on the boss, proud and yet pleading. Michael watched in wonder. He’d never seen Kelp open up like this. It seemed that Kelp had seen something in the boss linked to what he saw.
A chance.
“If you’ll take me, sir, I’ll work on your ship. Obviously, I know a lot about construction.”

The boss raised an eyebrow. He opened a locker and passed out glow-in-the-dark EVA suits to the Irishmen. These were color-blocked in the same greens and blues typically used on maps of Earth. Big Gothic letters on the integrated backpack-style mobility units said
Salvation
. He gave the last suit to Kelp. “You’ve got yourself a job, kid.”

The rest of the Haddocks looked appalled.

“Our permanent construction zone’s in the fuselage. Freefall environment. You should be comfortable there. If you
do
turn out to be ISA agents—” the boss grinned— “I’ll space you myself. Otherwise, welcome aboard.”

Michael felt an irrational twinge of jealousy. He looked away, and accidentally met the eyes of Brian, who made a skeptical face. “Helmets on,” the Irishman said.

The Haddocks stayed on the docking pad. Everyone else—including the armed men—got into the Dumptruck. Brian took the steering yoke. The boss rode in the back with the rest of them. Michael liked that the boss was not above riding in a glorified dumpster. Michael’s own father never went anywhere in a lesser vehicle than his own Rolls Royce skiff, or the Voidstream spaceplane for longer journeys, even though he owned a fleet of recycling barges so decrepit, they would have given the Ceres licensing commission a collective fit—if Adnan Kharbage had not had the Ceres licensing commission in his pocket.

The boss said, “What about you, kid? What’s your name, where did you come from?”

Michael dropped his gaze. He was feeling very lost without his mecha, barely holding it together. “My name’s Michael Kharbage. My father was going to send me to school on Earth, so I ran away.”

“Why did you run here?”

Michael shook his head. “I just want my ship back.”

Brian took them safely around the cloud of asteroid fragments this time. As they cleared the danger area, a burst of bright light flooded over the Dumptruck.
Something’s blown up,
Michael thought. He saw his own small shadow hunched on the wall of the skip.
The war’s come here, after all.
He realized with great clarity that he didn’t want to die. He’d told the boss the truth: he
had
run away—from the war … but he hadn’t run far enough.

His breath came in high hoarse pants.

The light didn’t go away, like an explosion would have. Its source moved rapidly. Their shadows slanted and collapsed into a corner of the Dumptruck.

The boss jumped to his feet, gesturing angrily. Michael clicked through all the channels on his FM selector, eager to hear what was being said. He didn’t look up until one of the men nudged him. “It’s a drive.”

The light source was now bluish-tinged, identifying it as the white-hot plasma from a fusion drive. It shrank into the void and vanished.

“What ship?” Michael wondered aloud.

“The
Monster.”

“Gone. Gone!” the boss said. “Good riddance. We don’t need their negativity.” But he sounded tense, not happy about it.

The
Kharbage Collector
was still there. The rotator arm was barely turning. The ship looked abandoned. But a puff of gas wisped from one of the auxiliary ion thrusters around the main drive shield. Someone was in there, station-keeping.

The Dumptruck cruised along the Startractor’s spine. Brian’s men crouched at the back, laser rifles at their shoulders. Nothing moved.

A dozen fully inflated Bigelow habs now occupied the cargo bays. There was nowhere left to dock, so Brian deployed grapples. Magnetic clamps glommed onto the plate between Cargo Bays 2 and 3. They all jumped out and bobbled towards the quarterdeck, still tethered to the Dumptruck.

The airlock of the little quarterdeck module opened. A group of people in patched black EVA suits floated out. None wore tethers. They held their positions in the vacuum effortlessly, dribbling gas from their personal mobility packs to stay upright.

The tallest one carried the same Habsafe™ laser rifle he’d used to chase Michael and the Haddock gang off the ship.

“What do you want?” Kiyoshi Yonezawa said.

My ship!
Michael thought, but he was too frightened to say it out loud.

T
he boss floated up to Yonezawa. “The
Monster’s
gone.”

“Yup.”

“Where to?”

“You mind your own business, and I’ll do the same.”

“Didn’t take you. Who did he take?” The boss turned his helmet, glancing at the clusters of Bigelows in the cargo bays. “Ha! He didn’t take
anyone,
did he? Left you here. Stranded.”

“We’re not alone,” Yonezawa pointed out. “Got the
Salvation
parked next door, packed full of life-support essentials. You’ve procured enough stuff to last a thousand people a hundred years.”

“Longer than that,” the boss said. “And none of it’s yours.”

“I
procured a heck of a lot of that stuff, running your errands in the asteroid belt and beyond. I’ve worked for you half my life.”

“And you were well paid for it.”

“You still owe me for my last run.”

“Money,” the boss said. “Money, money, money. That’s all you ever think about, Yonezawa. Money’s going to be about as much use as plastic toilet paper when Earth falls.”

Yonezawa laughed. “Earth isn’t going to fall. Have some faith.”

“Faith in what? Your Christian god?”

“Whatever god you like. I know you’re a devout Muslim.”

That explained the beard, but Michael did not take this revelation too seriously. Yonezawa was obviously being sarcastic. Anyway, Michael had known plenty of Muslims on Ceres. They were just like everyone else, except they didn’t drink or do drugs. He approved of that, naturally. Spending time around professional astronauts, he’d learned that addiction was the worst vice of all, the downfall of many trekkies who had everything else going for them.

“Insha’Allah, we’ll survive, but many millions won’t,” the boss said. “Who’s going to protect humanity from the PLAN? Star Force?”

The incredulous way he said that made everyone laugh, even Yonezawa’s henchmen.

“Star
Farce!”
Michael chirped, taking what was obviously the right side of the joke.

“Ha, ha; the kid gets it,” the boss said. “With protectors like that, humanity is doomed.” He uttered this prophecy in a matter-of-fact tone. “Folks are starting to catch on. Throughout the asteroid belt, people are panicking. A couple more 6 Hebes, and everyone will get it: the PLAN is going to win. This. Is. The. End.” Michael shuddered at the sudden intensity in the boss’s voice. “The time to run for the hills is
now,
before the stampede starts, before civilization breaks down. Everyone here understands that. Everyone except you.”

He spoke ostensibly to Yonezawa, but Michael saw some of Yonezawa’s henchmen make nervous movements.

“It’s easy to talk about running for the hills,” Yonezawa said. “Harder to follow through. That ship of yours? It’s not going anywhere. No fusion drive in the universe can push that much mass—soil! Trees! Rivers and ponds! You might as well walk. As for the Bussard ramjet, it’s useless until you get up to 6% of the speed of light.”

A Bussard ramjet!
Michael suddenly understood what the arrangement of spokes at the
Salvation’s
nose was.

“Quit talking out of your ass, Yonezawa,” the boss said. “I’ll give you one last chance. Come aboard. There’s plenty of room left for your people. We’ll make Arsalan and his people move over. They don’t need a whole freaking deck for their goats.”

“Oh, so we get to live next door to the Pashtuns,” Yonezawa said. “Ha, ha. No.”

“Jun’s abandoned you. Five hundred and sixty of you in that clunker? You are going to die.”

“We’re Japanese. We can do more with less than you can even conceive of.”

“That’s right,” a couple of Yonezawa’s people said.

The boss threw up his hands. Fearing he was about to cede the argument, Michael clenched his fists. “It’s
my
ship! You had no right to throw me off and just take it!”

Yonezawa looked around until he saw who had spoken. Michael was easily identifiable, being the smallest person there. Also, his pricey crimson-and-kingfisher self-luminous suit said
Kharbage, LLC
on the chest.