Six

 

 

 

Blade blinked.

“Excuse me?” she asked, seeking clarity from the dream haze.

“Just come with us, and we’ll sort this all out,” Phran said magnanimously, and swept his arms kindly toward the main entrance.  Several primed lasers also subtly nudged in that direction.

Oh T’zoah.

“Where are you taking me?”

“Airloq Five,” Dayv said flatly.

Blade took a deep breath, loosed it as half a yawn.  She flexed into a standing posture and said grimly, “No.”  She refused to be led to her own slaughter, especially one as horrid as spacing.  Her knife was still against her thigh, so she doubted that she would be taking any of these bastards with her, but a lazer burst is pretty quick and clean.

“Last chance to talk, lady,” Dayv drawled.  “What’re you doing here?”

She shrugged.  “Wrong place at the wrong time.”

Dayv clearly would have none of it.  “Look, we know you’re a spy.  The station confirmed it.”

This actually made Blade chuckle.  “Sure they did.”

“Well, why else would your friends on the station want requested your release in exchange for Thackerdley,” Dayv drawled, then realized that with is accusing evidence he had let the cat out of the bag about her fate.

Blade did not immediately pick up on it.  “What’s a Thackerdley?” was all she could ask, wondering what she was being traded for.

Dayv frowned, not believing she didn’t already know.  “He’s a miner who was arrested on the station.  For spying,” he added with an accusing stare.  Meeting it, Blade saw the inflamed veins in his eyes tying knots with each other: the grim fire behind them had reached boiling.

“We figured one spy for another is an even trade.” Carrot said at last.

Blade began to wonder if this was some sick form of entrapment.  Phran’s reassuring next words sealed it.

“Just come with us to the airloq, and we’ll send you up to the station.”

Blade still wondered if she’d be in a ship or her skivvies when they sent her.

“Wait.  Blade wants you to explain this to her slowly.  Who at the station wants a Thackerdley for me?”

“Glutt,” Dayv hissed.

Blade wasn’t sure what she should say; gesundheit sprung to mind.  She waited for him to elabourate.  He didn’t, so she said, “I’m sorry, I thought you said Glutt.”

“Glutt,” Dayv hissed accusingly.

“Who or what is a Glutt?”

Dayv clearly wasn’t amused by her playing dumb.  Phran finally answered, and since he was the one who had spoken to Glutt, he answered her next question for her as well.

“He’s the head of Station security, and he wants you for questioning regarding a crime.”

“What’d I do now?” she cried exasperatedly.

“He didn’t say, but he requested that you be questioned at the crime scene.  We explained that you were being indefinitely detained for several improprieties, but were willing to exchange you for one of our own being held on similar charges.  He agreed, and even offered to return you after questioning.

Dayv smiled sourly at that: fat chance.   Blade could tell that he wasn’t happy with this deal, and she wondered who had orchestrated it—if it was even legit.

Just then the corporal arrived, his headset patch cord stuffed into his pocket.  He went straight up to Dayv.

“Throhn’s on the qomm.  He wants to talk to you again.”

Dayv’s whole demeanour chilled ten degrees.  He nodded at the corporal, who promptly disappeared.  Dayv stood a moment, the turned to Blade.

“We don’t want you here, you son of a bitch.  We know why you’re here.  You’re gonna tell everyone we’re a bunch of crazies.”  His fingers began fidgeting with an invisible cigarette.  ”You all leave us alone, and we’ll do likewise.  So you tell Glutt to stay on his station and tend to his own affairs.  He doesn’t own us any more; we are the children who have matured to collect the inheritance.”  A far-away look came into his eye, and in it he saw the source of his parting words parable.  Whom he had waiting on qomm at that moment.  He looked contemptuously at her, and left.

Blade stood firm, looking at Carrot, Phran, and the armed escort.  Phran still indicated the open door through which the Mighty Man had just egressed.

“It’ll be a while before the shuttle arrives to pick you up, “Phran told her.  “I thought you might like to get out and wait there.“

“I’ll wait here, thanks.”

Phran shrugged, and a short silence ensued.

“So, what’d you do up on the station?” Carrot asked, partly to kill time, partly out of curiosity.

Blade shrugged, and moved to the centre of the room.  Her opening stride squashed the gray foam tray that held her clone.  Eyes turned to it, then to her.

“I got hungry,” she explained, and her tummy rumbled on cue.  “Oh, how was dinner?”

The corn was homegrown at a tack-on greenhouse there at the colony.  Throhn had ordered them started five years ago, and they were still refining their techniques.  Carrot smiled to show kernel-coated teeth, a smile that belied the feeling of having a stomach full of garlic-flavoured packaging excelsior grinding its way through digestion.

“Can’t say I’m sorry I missed it.  You know, I had to miss a dinner date because of this.”

Softly, she heard a squeak come from under her bunk, and reflexively glanced that way.

High up in orbit, a technician named Charlea cried “Oh shit!” and jerked his hand back from a dial marked squeek.

“What?” a Saladrin next to him asked.  It was moving a toggle in an arc, and on that station’s monitor the view of an airduct panned as well.

“I squeaked mine by accident,” Charlea replied, and checked his screen.  Superimposed was a grill, and the top half of the screen was cut off by the darkness of the bunk shelf  Blade’s legs were in the middle of the screen, and he could see Phran, Carrot, and the guards at an angle to the side.  They were turning their attention away from his hidey-hole, back to the legs.

“I’m cool,” Charlea said at last, and this time checked the knob he was adjusting: he was panning the audio to filter the room’s echo.  Through the rat’s ears-and quickly thereafter his headphones, he heard the conversation continue.

“Oh man, I just can’t deal with this any more” came a voice on the other side of Charlea.  He looked over, and saw his neighbour slumped in his chair, tangled bangs falling into his face.  Amid his console was his fifth refill of AWAKE! and a brimming ashtray.

“You okay, Big Guy?” Charlea asked him.  Big Guy was at the tail end of a double shift.  His rat was perched in an air duct.  It was the only one with a view of the cargo dock, where some uninteresting loading up was going on.

“This is going to haunt me all night,” Big Guy groaned.  Charlea looked at the screen.  Facing away from them, a heavy miner was picking up unmarked boxes and stacking them on an anti-grav palate.  His pants were falling down, and bending over to the screen ended with some serious buttcheek action.  After twenty minutes of this cursed view, Big Guy was losing it.

Charlea slapped him on the back, a buck-up maneuver that was as insincere as it was unsuccessful.

“Man, at least you got killer legs to look at,” he said begrudgingly, and looked over to check out the action on Charlea’s screen.

Both he and Charlea were surprised to find the room empty.

Those legs were stranding in the front room; Carrot had coaxed her out by agreeing to return her possessions.

“If you don’t mind,” he told her, “we’ll hang on to these for the time being.”  He removed her weaponry into a separate pile, and she began stashing her things into pockets.  The last item was her watch.  Picking it up, the rubber band was nowhere to be seen.

“I had a rubber band,” she announced.  Reflexively, Phran unlocked and opened a desk drawer, and pulled one out from a tray of office supplies.  Blade noticed that next to the tray was an Stylix, and there was a lot of loose paper with the Mosaic Cornerstone masthead.  She could only read the word confidential upside-down.

He shut the drawer and handed the band to Blade.  She took it and tied a knot around her watchband.  Too tight, and deliberately: the oxidized rubber frayed and snapped in her hand.  She pulled it out from around the clasp, and sweetly asked, “So sorry, but could I trouble you for another?”

Phran had not yet locked the drawer, obligingly he pulled it out, and even held it open several seconds while he searched for a more durable one.  Throhn was cutting costs not only with food but with basic supplies: their price was as low as their quality.  He mulled over the pickings, to Carrot’s obvious irritation.

Blade saw that the top document was an arrest report.  A miner with a really long name had been detained for “Unauthorized Proximity” of Crater 8.  He was transferred here for “psychiatric evaluation of damage,” but Phran shut the drawer before she could learn the end of the case.

He handed the band to her, and she successfully tied her watch together.  Dial scrutiny: she’d been here almost four hours.

“Think your ship’s ready yet?” she asked.

The two looked nervous.  “What ship?”

“The one taking me back up,” she reminded them sternly.

“Oh, we don’t have any ships available to do that.  Glutt is sending one down, with Thackardly on it.  It should be here any time now.  Sure you don’t want to wait by the airloq?”

Blade decided that she had to go eventually, and the walk would limber her up.  They walked down the corridor in silence, miners they passed giving her a wide berth.  She felt the looks of suspicion, fear, even wonder.

The entourage entered the main loading bay.  A small shuttle was being loaded with anti-grav palates of bulky synthwood crates.  The whole area had an earthy, metallic smell expectant of a mining shaft.  Phran stopped to look around, as did Blade.  Everyone else had stopped and was looking at her.  Everyone except for one miner, off to the left.  Taking no notice of her, the heavy worker continued to load heavier crates.  His pants were falling down, and there was a major gluteus show.  Blade looked away, disgusted but wondering if that was the owner of her clone.  She turned to see what Phran and Carrot were looking at: the empty bays at the end.

They went over to a side room that accessed the airloq: cargo went into the bay, people went into the small vestibule.  A small table was laid out, along with several uncomfortable chairs.  Reinforced windows offered desolate views of the planet amid swirls of blue, green, and gray.

Blade put her back to a wall and looked at the armed miners.  One was working a fingernail in between molars, another was struggling desperately not to yawn.  They all looked dog-tired, but something was driving them on.

Even Phran let out a prolonged yawn, then stretched so he could buck up to the many hours of activity he had left before he could sleep.  Because of Blade’s arrival, the nightly instruction seminar had been postponed in lieu of detailed damage control and the inevitable grill-outs.  Phran looked over at the woman who had thrown such a monkey wrench into their schedules.  Things were already moving too quickly toward their deadline with destiny, and he already knew things would get exponentially hectic.  He was just glad that nothing immediately bad had happened because of her arrival.  It only showed how on edge they all were, and, despite Throhn’s training, how unprepared they were.  And now she was leaving, and they were getting Thackerdley back in exchange.  So, looking at things optimistically, good had come from her visit.  Phran had heard others muttering similar ideas.  The prevalent view of this minority opinion was that she was some kind of Messenger or omen.  After all, she was a sculptor, and...

“Is that it?” Blade asked, pointing out the window.  Over the mountains, a small cluster of fixed and blinking lights made their way amid the growing winds.  Phran put down the wool he had gathered and looked out the window.  Carrot, next to the glassteel, was also looking out at the approaching craft.

“No,” he said as he discerned the lights’ configuration.  “It’s one of ours, from another mining sight.”

Blade shrugged, and her hopes sank with her shoulders.  She considered saying “Let me guess: bringing in another prisoner from Crater 8 for evaluation” but wisely decided against any more small talk.

Oddly enough, the shuttle was coming in from Crater 8, but it was empty.  Blade would have been very surprised to know what they intended to load onto it for use back at Crater 8.  Big Guy would be very surprised too, and his superiors would be very glad that he persevered the hours of buttcheek terror to see that half of the crates being loaded onto the second shuttle had three orange and three black triangles on them: (still) the universal nuclear symbol.

Blade looked at her watch, and smiled.  11:11  Vic Time.  Still no shuttle, if there even was one, so she decided to talk this one out to figure out what was going on.  If nothing else, it would be fun to punch holes in their story.

“You said that when I was done at the station I was to be returned,” she started off.  She forgot if Phran or Dayv had told her that; they kind of mumbled it after casting the release bait.

Phran, who was more fully briefed on this, replied, “Glutt didn’t seem interested in you except regarding a crime on the station.”

“He didn’t say what?”

“Not to me, anyway.  He actually offered to return you after.  Dayv and even Throhn were both pleased and suspicious to hear that.”

“Dayv?  Suspicious?  No!  But who’s Throhn?”

Awkwardly, Carrot inserted, “Sort of our General Manager.”

“Oh.  And he took an interest in little old me?”

“Quite so, actually.  Upon learning of your arrival, Throhn expressed interest in you, but has been detained by, uh, other administrative matters.  He’s got a whole planet to run,” Carrot said, half apologetically.  “However, there is an old policy left over from when the planet and the station both became separately sovereign.  Prisoners were often exchanged.  We don’t do this much anymore, as we have as little contact with each other as possible.  However, Glutt offered up a version of this old deal, and offered Thackerdley as collateral.”

“Collateral?” Blade asked over muffled alarms: the second shuttle was docking outside.

“Well, yes.  When Throhn learned of this offer, he quickly agreed.”

“Why?  Who is Thackerdley?”

“He’s just another miner,” Carrot replied, quickly enough that Blade knew he was anything but.

“We’re a close-knit community,” Phran added, “and we look out after our own.”

“What was he arrested for?”

“Carrying a concealed weapon.”

“Oh?  I thought you said he was a spy.”

“Only as much as you are,” Carrot smiled.  Behind him, another cluster of lights was descending into view.

“She’s asking too many questions,” Dayv said as he looked at a vidio of the waiting room.

“She is an annoying little shit, isn’t she?” said the man to his right.  He was conspicuously out of place in the command centre, as he was the only one wearing a suit.  Shined crockogator shoes hugged argyle socks, and a thin band of sweat ringed his bald pate.

“She smokes, too.” Argyle said, somewhat absently and with.  He missed Dayv’s twinge, and the devaluating glance.  Dayv way shy on trust for everyone, and Argyle, by his very unfamiliarity, earned even less.  Throhn had vouched for him personally, but Dayv could tell that he wasn’t into it.  He didn’t know, as it were, the secret handshakes or the magic passwords that would have made him a tile of the Mosaic.

Which meant that he could not be trusted, because he was not really one of us.

“Uh, Dayv?”  The corporal, still wearing the useless headphones, managed to attract the Mighty Man’s attention.  “The station’s shuttle is on line, asking if they can land.”

“I hope so,” Dayv said dryly, “or we’ll have to clean up the debris.”

The corporal relayed a message to the shuttle, then to the group waiting by the airloq.  Then Dayv got his attention.

“Oh, and shut off that damned landing beacon when they’re in.”  Dayv liked to keep as low a profile as possible.  “Allright, I’m outta here.”  Grabbing his rifle, he joined a group of armed miners at the door and headed for the shuttle bay.

Everyone there was visibly relieved when the craft could be heard landing outside, Blade most of all.  Phran said something to her, but the room was very poorly soundproofed.

“What?” she yelled.

“I said that we’d get this all worked out.”  He winked at her.

Just then Dayv strolled in with his detachment.  Without even acknowledging her, he walked straight up to the airloq door, and thumbed his albedo screen.  The others, Phran and Carrot included, did likewise.  The room filled with a pale blue glow as the noise from outside ebbed to a low rumble.  From the information on the panel, the airloq was running a decontamination cycle.  Blade snorted: don’t want any germs from the outside coming in and spying on them.  Thank god they don’t have thought decontaminators, to kill any ideas they might not want admitted inside.

The cycle ended, and then the interqom came on.

“Excuse me,” came a thick, oddly feminine growl, “but is the misses of the house home?”

Dayv took aim at the door with one hand, pressed the release with the other.  Doors parted, and mixed ordinance greeted the three inside.

Shimmering blue albedos deepened the indigo hue of the two guards’ uniforms.  One, Blade noticed was the brawny Hamaddi she’d seen in the Station’s bar some hours earlier.  And with her was the man she’d grabbed from a plate of pasta.  His hands were secured behind him.

“Hi, Dad, I’m home.” He said to Phran.

The hulking femaddi said to the old man, “Well, I suggest you give him a good spanking, because he’s been a bad boy.”  She reached around uncuffed her charge.  Uncertainly, he stepped forward while reflexively rubbing his wrists.  He looked at everyone, finally ending with Blade.  He frowned at her; she smiled hello.

The other guard also took note of her.  “You’re Gretchen Amorphous?” He asked her politely.

“Yes I am,” she said eagerly.

“This way, please.”

Blade went over to them.  Beyond the airloq, she could see the open shuttle.  She passed up the opportunity to make parting words to her former hosts in favour of backing toward the shuttle.  The two Indigos were quick to follow: they clearly did not like having so many guns aimed at them by such trembling fingers.  They quickly concluded the transaction, and Dayv happily shut them out.

As the doors sealed together, all attention quickly turned to their new arrival.  Phran made his way forth to embrace his son, but found his scrawling a message on the table.  The code was Greek and Coptic characters in phonetic Galacommon.

I think I’m bugged.

They all nodded silently, not that anything said could be heard over the roar of the shuttle departing.

 

 

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