Dubious Heroes: a novel Read online

  A man, presumably the bartender, came over from behind the bar, and I ordered a drink from him. A few minutes passed, and I was about to get up and retrieve it from the bar myself, when a woman walked into the room, picked up my drink, and brought it over to me. The light was dim, but it was easy enough to see she was nude (and gloriously so), adorned only with some body paint, and not much of that. There must have been some UV lighting in the place, as the body paint was softly glowing. She also wore some sort of high-heeled sticky shoe that did nice things for her legs, not that they needed any help. She was so perfectly proportioned that some sort of body engineering had to have been involved. There were soft curves in all the right places, and firm muscle in between. Her breasts seemed to have a will of their own in the low gravity. She handed me the drink, and sat down in my lap.

  “Hi”, she said. “I’m Ursula.”

  Outraged at her forwardness, I jumped up fled the place. Okay, that didn’t happen. We already know I’m not above a little creative blackmail, so if you’re keeping track of my moral or ethical shortcomings, you may as well add one more thing to your list.

  She wiggled her bottom, settling in, and smiled at me.

  “I’m Doon”, I said, and wondered if it was proper etiquette to shake hands with a naked lady. They never cover these things in school. At least not on Luna.

  “So, how long are you on Phobos?” she asked.

  It was cheesy and clichéd, lacking only the words hey sailor to complete the absurdity. But, it was the world’s oldest profession, and if anyone should know what works, they ought to. It was definitely working for me.

  I was about to reply, when she slipped her hand between us to touch my penis, which, jumpsuit notwithstanding, was pretty easy to find by this point. Phobos was certainly a friendly place. So much for a handshake.

  “Sorry”, I said, trying to brush away some of my spilled drink from her warm skin, which proved an interesting endeavor all by itself. She giggled as I smeared some of her body paint across a sensitive area.

  “My ship leaves in thirteen hours”, I said, as she continued to stroke that most sensitive area of my own. She flipped her long black hair to one side with a toss of her head; the gossamer tresses cascading down across her shoulder in slow motion. I marveled that her breasts were every bit as warm and firm as they appeared. Her nipples hardened as I traced circles around them with my fingertip.

  Leaning forward she kissed me deeply, the sweetness of her breath and taste lingering as we parted. She smiled, her face almost touching mine, and I tried not to fall into the bottomless pools of her eyes.

  “I think that’s enough time for a little fun, don’t you?” she asked.

  It was.

  After some enthusiastic lovemaking (and a nap), I left Ursula’s company five hundred credits poorer, with eleven more hours to kill. My attempts at talking her into joining me for the trip to Io proved fruitless, not that I was surprised. If she had any interest in screwing the same person all the time, she could easily find someone a lot wealthier than me, and sign a monogamous partnership contract. Not to mention, no one goes to Io for fun. People still did the contract thing, although it was more common in the outlying colonies than the inner system. Apparently, pairing off in that traditional fashion did make some sort of sense, out there on the edge of civilization.

  Regardless, she wasn’t interested, but she did recommend a nearby pub where I could get a good meal before my departure. I wasn’t looking forward to two months of shipboard food.

  She asked what it was I did, so I mentioned I was in the shipping business. She tactfully tried to find out more, but I deflected her questions with generalities and some tact of my own. No one else seemed to be impressed with my job, so why would she be any different?

  Relenting, she smiled and winked at me, and said that the Last Chance, on Spacer’s Row, would be just my kind of place. I wasn’t sure I had a kind of place, although she did know me quite a bit more intimately (if briefly) than anyone else on Phobos. So, after I left, I said what the hell, and used my Pod to call up a map to the place.

  Spacer’s Row was a long corridor, well away from the hubbub of the main passages, not far from the docks. It was lined with establishments that, as the name indicated, catered to ships crews, dock workers, and so on. You’ll find similar places wherever there’s a spaceport, which is to say, everywhere. I tried hard not to look like a tourist.

  The Last Chance was a dive; there was no more polite word for it. There were similar joints on Luna, though I didn't frequent them. You’d find mostly locals hanging out there, and while the places were dimly lit, the only real mystery was why people chose one particular place over another just like it, three doors down the way. Still, Ursula had said I’d get a decent meal here, so I ignored the seedy ambience and wandered on in.

  Nearly everyone there, maybe eight or ten people, were wearing shades, which made it hard to tell who was looking where. I’d worn a pair while in college, when a girl I was dating managed to convince me I looked cool with them on. I ditched her after a few weeks, and the shades shortly thereafter. The dark glasses screw up facial rec and retinal scans, and walking into doors that don’t open for you gets old pretty fast. It was probably just a spacer thing, with these guys. Belatedly, I realized I’d seen more than a few people walking around wearing the shades, especially around the docks.

  Everyone ignored me, so I sat down at the bar and ordered a beer and a meal. Soft background music of some sort blended with the quiet buzz of conversations. As bars went, it was comfortable enough, once you got past the feeling that everyone was watching you on the sly. Hell, maybe they were. Behind the bar, there was a huge antique glass mirror, as well as a couple of vidscreens, one showing news, the other a sporting event; guys wearing face masks and oxygen tanks, walking around on what looked like Mars, whacking little white balls through the dust and rock with metal rods. I thought it might be something called golf, but wasn’t sure. At any rate, it was boring as hell to watch. Guess you had to be there.

  My meal finally arrived; something called Shepherd’s Pie, which the bartender had touted as the house specialty. It didn’t look like any soy I’d ever had, but it smelled great, and tasted even better. I don’t know what it was made of, but I liked it. I divided my attention between eating, watching the news, and trying to inconspicuously watch everyone else around me via the mirror.

  I quickly polished off the dinner; it had been very good, and for a moment I considered ordering another. I’d burned quite a few calories in the company of Ursula. Then I thought of the time I’d be spending in zero gee, as we departed Phobos, and the thought of all that food on my stomach didn’t seem like such a wise idea. I compromised, and ordered another beer.

  The barman delivered my beer, and, taking a sip from the mug, I noticed a tall redhead standing at the bar, several feet to my left. It was as though she’d just materialized there, out of nothingness. I briefly thought she might be a holo, but those are always partially transparent and she looked pretty solid.

  She was dressed in something black and form fitting, which seemed to shimmer and glisten with her slightest movement. She was facing my direction, one elbow on the bar, and seemed to be looking right at me, although I couldn’t be sure; she was wearing a pair of those damn shades. She took a swig of her beer, her attention never wavering.

  I raised my beer, and gave her a small salute, then took a drink. She didn’t move a muscle, nor did her expression change. I gazed her way for a moment longer, then thought, well, fuck it, and turned my attention back to the vid screen. I pretended to watch the news, while in reality, I continued to check her out using the mirror. Her bright red hair was long, and while not straight, wasn’t all that curly, either. Her black outfit and fiery hair were a sharp contrast to her pale, alabaster skin. I’d never seen anyone so white. She was tall, though not unusually so. The low gravity of most non-Earth settlements meant that children tended to grow taller than they would have un
der higher gee. I’d have put her at around six feet or so, while I’m a shade over six-four. That works out to around a hundred eighty and a hundred ninety centimeters, respectively, for those of you who actually complied with the United Planets directive to “use metric, or else”.

  I’d seen a few people carrying weapons on Phobos; it was unusual enough, at least for me, to warrant attention. She was sporting a pair of pistols in drop holsters, one on each hip. Not sure why, but they seemed to make her look even sexier. Not that she needed help with that; she wasn’t thin; her outfit did little to hide the generous curves and rippling muscle beneath. Living in low gee, that took an awful lot of exercise and conditioning, or some bioengineering. Looking at the end result, I couldn’t see that it mattered.

  After a few more minutes of unabashedly ogling me, she sat her beer on the bar, turned and walked out, moving with the cat-like grace of someone who spends a lot of time in low gee. I finished my beer, quickly settled my tab, and left the bar. I walked around Spacer’s Row for a while, hoping to catch sight of her again, but I never did. Damn, I knew I should have approached her in the bar.

  Eventually, the sheer sensory overload of the lights, the noise, and the frenzied, chaotic activity of people trying too hard to have fun started to give me a headache, so I bailed and headed for the docks. Within minutes, I’d found the Valkyrie, and checked into my berth aboard her. The crew was polite and friendly, even though they doubtless considered me some sort of corporate snoop.

  The TGS Valkyrie was a Conestoga class ship, and while everyone called it a liner, it was really a multi-purpose vessel. It could carry one hundred twenty passengers, a crew of twenty, and about a hundred tons of cargo. It even carried its own small landing craft. Unlike our shuttles, the Valkyrie was equipped with a Dark Energy Drive, informally known as a star drive, giving the ship interstellar capability.

  Even with the star drive, liners were slow. True, they were big- sort of like seeing a city block lift off and take to space. But that’s not really an issue with space flight. You just scale up the engines to handle the additional mass, and off you go. It was largely for passenger comfort that acceleration was usually held at three quarters of a gee, and almost never beyond one gee, although a Conestoga could (theoretically) hit a gee and a half. Unfortunately, the star drive was useless inside the solar system. Sure, it would work within the system, but DEC advised against using one within thirty light minutes of any significant gravity well. They were a little vague as to what constituted significant, so, aside from some of the big open spaces between the outer planets (or venturing above or below the plane of the elliptic), your safest bet was to wait until you were at least three hundred million miles from anything before engaging the drive. Otherwise, according to DEC, bad things were almost certain to happen, such as the 99% chance you’d transit out and never be heard from again. Oh yeah. It would also void your warranty.

  I don’t even pretend to know how a star drive works, and the guys at Dark Energy Corporation aren’t fond of explaining it, either. They seem to consider it their own proprietary branch of physics. From what I understand, the drive somehow allows the ship to enter into what’s called the Dark Universe, where we, being made of normal matter, couldn’t ordinarily exist. Minutes later, you emerge back into normal space, hopefully at a precalculated position, which might be light years from where you were. This is known as a transit. Early on, the public wanted to call it a warp drive, which DEC wasn’t thrilled with, insisting that nothing was being warped, so it didn’t make any sense. Eventually, someone came up with star drive as a moniker, which DEC grudgingly accepted as the lesser of two evils, even though it wasn’t really any sort of drive, either.

  Io was a lot further from Mars than Mars was from Luna, so I’d be looking at a trip of about two months. The gravity would still be higher than I was used to on Luna, but I’d adjust soon enough, and there were a few more shipboard amenities than on the shuttle.

  We left Phobos Station on schedule, and within a day or two, I’d become acclimated enough to the one gee to leave my cabin and wander around some.

  The Habitat module of the Valkyrie was huge, with seven stacked decks. As with most modules, it was essentially shaped like a big metal can. The top deck held the MedLab, a well-equipped gym, and a multi-purpose lounge. My ship specs said there were other things there as well (like life support), but as was usual, doors into places we weren’t allowed simply wouldn’t open for us.

  The next two decks down were for the crew, and while the hatches wouldn’t open for us, more than a few passengers (especially the women) were spending time on the crew decks. One of the crew offered to give me a tour, which would no doubt include his quarters. I was curious about those decks, but not about the other thing, so I politely declined.

  The bottom four decks held passengers, and generally, we were advised to stick to our own deck. Naturally, that was the first thing we didn’t do. Each deck had its own refresher and dining facilities, and on top of that, some people never seemed to leave their cabins. As a consequence, I figured I only managed to meet maybe three-quarters of my fellow passengers.

  We killed time with chess tournaments, video games, vids, and there was almost always a poker game going on somewhere. I did my daily workouts, and caught up on some reading, but generally, much like everyone else, I was bored out of my mind.

  I did manage to find a female passenger interested in more amorous activities, and we ended up spending quite a lot of time together, first in the passenger lounge, which had a bar, then in more private places, like our cabins. I don’t know how she felt but I certainly found this a wonderful way to alleviate boredom. Apparently, shipboard romances were pretty common, and we noticed a number of other people sneaking around, too. It's amazing how well a relationship will work, when both parties know that on a very specific date, both of you will say goodbye and go your separate ways. Finally, I’d found something I couldn’t screw up.

  The Bridge module was in the usual place, sitting atop the habitat, with access via the central core, which ran the length of the ship. I never had a chance to bother the crew; the damned AI wouldn’t take the lift up to the Bridge. Yes, there’s a ladder, too, but there are hatches between every deck, controlled by you-know-who. This was probably just as well; I’d heard a rumor that any passenger who made a nuisance of themselves could be confined to their cabin. This was not how I wanted to spend two months.

  Still, time did pass, and after sixty-three days, with little in the way of fanfare, we landed on Io.

  Chapter 5

  “You’re out of your fucking mind, Doon”, Cozi said, tossing back a shot of the local hooch, poetically named Jovian Bliss, or just Bliss, for short. In addition to its chief purpose of killing brain cells, it was also supposed to be good at cutting heavy machine grease.

  “Maybe”, I said, tossing down a shot of Bliss myself, which was working well; I could no longer remember how many I’d had. Once I had my breath back, I continued.

  “Keep your voice down”, I said, looking nervously around a bar that was jammed wall-to-wall with a crowd of jostling, sweating, noisy ice miners.

  “Get real”, he yelled back at me. “You could set off a survey charge in here and no one would notice.”

  He was probably right, but I still didn’t like yelling a private conversation.

  “Whatever”, I said. “Hey, I know there are some issues, but trust me, it’ll work.”

  “Let me get this straight”, Cozi said, his eyes bugging out a bit as he tried to get them to focus. His hair looked as though he’d yanked on a 50 kilo-volt power feed; a young Albert Einstein. On speed. The appearance was not temporary, either. Cozi had a slightly deranged appearance, most of the time. Actually, all the time. Come to think of it, his eyes kind of bugged out most of the time, too, although the Bliss did seem to amplify the effect. Hanging onto the tabletop, presumably to either stop the room from spinning, or keep from falling off the chair, he began again.r />
  “As I understand this, you want us to go halfway across the damn system to Saturn, and we need to get there without anyone knowing we’ve gone. And naturally, you have no idea how to do this.”

  “Yeah, but-”

  He held up a hand, cutting me off.

  “I’m not done yet”, he said. “From Saturn, you want to catch another ride to one of the little piss-ant moons there.”

  “Good so far”, I said, which earned me a look. I shut up. I was having trouble feeling my tongue, anyway.

  “Then, once we reach Phobos-”

  “Phoebe”, I corrected. “Phobos is orbiting Mars.”

  “Whatever“, Cozi said. “We go there, and steal one of your own company’s spaceships, which are just sitting around, waiting for any idiot who walks up and wants one.”

  “They’re not just sitting there”, I said, not for the first time. “TGS owns Phoebe; it’s our graveyard. Phoebe is where we stick all our old ships and other shit we don’t expect to be using any time soon.”

  “Why would we want to steal some busted-ass ship, which might not even get us off the rock? Hell, if we’re gonna swipe a ship, let’s steal something that works.“

  “Most of these ships do work. If they’re fucked up beyond repair, we sell em off for scrap to salvage companies. These are ships we’re just not using right now, for one reason or another. Cheaper to stick `em on Phoebe, rather than have them scattered to hell and back, and pay expensive dock fees, on top of that. And, we’re not stealing one of them, we’re only gonna borrow it. I am a TGS employee, after all. Hell, I’m the one in charge of the graveyard.”