Dubious Heroes: a novel Read online

  “Nice”, I said. “I’ve got my very own guardian angel, and she’s a comedienne, too.”

  Kyra put down the Pod, slid off the crate, and walked over to face me. She lowered the shades, and put her hands on her hips. Apparently, she had a short fuse, and I’d just lit it.

  “This will go a lot smoother if we get a few things straight”, she said. “I am not, repeat not your guardian angel, your babysitter, or your body-paint-wearing fuck puppet. I’m a freelance security specialist doing my job, and that’s it. For what I considered a good reason at the time, I thought it was a good idea to keep you from stepping on your own dick; a decision I’m already beginning to regret, in just the short time I’ve known you.” She shook her head, sighed, and walked back over to the cargo box, sliding lithely onto it.

  “Thanks to my butting in where I shouldn’t have, and yanking you out from under the cops, I now have to figure out how to get your asses off of Io. They’re certainly still looking for you, and if they catch you, they’ll squeeze you until they get me, which is a situation I’d prefer to avoid. But we need to be clear on one thing. If you fuck with me, I’ll walk, and you two will be on your own. Do you understand me?”

  “Got it”, I said. She looked over at Cozi.

  “Hey, you won’t get any crap from me”, he said. “He’s the troublemaker.”

  “Way to be there, buddy”, I said.

  “You can piss off, Doon”, he said. “My guess is that now, no matter what else happens, I won’t be going back to my old boring job, like you said. You know how much time I had with Mojo?”

  “I know, I know”, I said. “I didn’t think things would go sideways this badly. Your buddy gave us Juno’s name, and he screwed us. ”I looked over at Kyra. “It was Juno that turned us in, right?”

  “I don’t know”, she said. “He’s a smuggler, but the cops may have something on him. Or they could just be watching him, seeing who he’s doing business with, and set you guys up without Juno knowing they were the cops. The latter would be my guess. If he were working with them, they’d have plenty of evidence to bust you, not that they’re concerned with evidence. No doubt though; you’d have left the bar in their custody.”

  “Who was the little guy with the gun?” I asked.

  “Just someone local I know”, she said.

  “That was a pretty good job you did, hiding on the Valkyrie“, I said. “Two months and I never saw you.”

  “That’s because I wasn’t there. I took a faster ship that left two days after you, and still beat you here by twelve days.”

  “How long have you been watching him?” Cozi asked. “And what do we do now?”

  “How long is none of your business”, she said. “As for what comes next, I’ve already said. If I can get you off of this rock, the cops will likely not continue bothering to look for you. They have too much other stuff to deal with, and no offense, but you two just aren’t that important.”

  “What about our stuff at the hotel?” Cozi asked.

  “I’ll see what I can do. Getting you out of here is the priority right now. Do you guys have any cash chips?”

  “About another thirty grand”, I said. I’d taken the precaution of stashing both data and credit chips all over me before leaving the hotel. Leaving them laying around didn’t seem like a good idea. “I still have over a hundred fifty thousand on my personal chip.”

  “Which they’ll be watching for you to use, for at least the next few weeks, if not months. If they’re really ticked off, they could freeze your account entirely.”

  “But it’s probably still good now”, I said.

  “Maybe”, she said. “But if you show up somewhere that sells cash chips, they’ll arrest you within minutes.”

  “So the money is history”, I said. This day just kept getting better and better.

  “There is one chance”, she said. “I might be able to sell it on the black market. You’d take a big hit- you might lose as much as half of it- but it would make getting you out of here a lot easier. Besides, as the saying goes, half of something beats all of nothing.”

  I took my bracelet off, and tossed it to her.

  “Alright”, I said, sighing. “See what you can do.” We had to trust her, basically a stranger, a lot more than I was comfortable with. I had no idea if what she was saying was the gospel truth, or just some fabrication to separate a couple of neophytes from their money. I didn’t see an alternative, though. If she was lying, I’d lose some cash. If she wasn’t, I’d lose a lot more than that.

  “By the way”, I said, “When we leave here, we still need to get to Saturn.”

  “You’re kidding me, right?” she said.

  “If you’re going to smuggle us off of here anyway, that’s where we want to go.”

  “Tell you what”, she said. “If you can explain to me why two reasonably upstanding citizens all of a sudden break bad, and want to smuggle themselves to Saturn, then I’ll consider it.”

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I don’t know who you’re working for”, I said. “There are parties out there who’d take a dim view of what I have in mind. If you’re working for them, it would certainly make things a lot more… awkward. After all, you may be acting on our behalf right now, but I’m not the guy paying your salary.”

  “Okay, so you have a point. I’ll consider it”, she said, after a moment. “But no guarantees.”

  “Besides”, I said, smiling. “If you keep watching me, you’ll find out, eventually.”

  “We’ll see”, she said. “In the meantime, I have a lot to do, and while I’m doing it, you two need to sit tight. Do not, I repeat not leave this room. The things I have to do may take several hours. There’s a ‘fresher through that door-” she tapped a cargo box- ” and there’s food in some of these. You both have your Pods on you?”

  “Yeah”, I said.

  “I left mine at the hotel”, Cozi said.

  “Turn it off, now. This room is supposed to be shielded, but I’d rather not count on it. We’re dealing with real cops here, not the local yokels with Io security.”

  “You are coming back, aren’t you?” Cozi asked.

  “You’d better hope so”, she said, smiling, as she walked out the door.

  Cozi and I spent some time poking around in the crates, eating some of what we found, and stashing a few of the more interesting items about our persons. This killed maybe two hours, leaving us with a lot of time to argue about who was to blame for our current situation, and about what might happen next. It also left a lot of time to generally sit around and worry.

  Kyra returned after eleven hours. The door whisked open, and she walked in, carrying three duffel bags.

  “You’re still here”, she said, scowling.

  “You were expecting us to leave?” I asked.

  “Expecting, no. Hoping is more like it”, she said. She pitched a medium sized travel bag to Cozi, and tossed me my familiar duffel.

  “What’s this?” Cozi asked, looking at the bag.

  “Your personal effects from your quarters at the mining camp. If it looked personal, and would fit into the bag, it’s there. Plus, some clean clothes, if you can call them that.”

  “No shit”, Cozi said. “I’d forgotten all about the stuff. There are some data chips and things I wouldn’t have wanted to lose.”

  “My reasons weren’t sentimental”, she said. “It’ll raise a few less eyebrows if it looks as though you left in a hurry, rather than simply vanished. I don’t expect the cops to be going around sharing their own theories with the locals.”

  She walked over to me, and handed me a stack of cash chips.

  “Those are ten thousand apiece”, she said. “I was able to get a hundred for your one fifty, which is a much better deal than I expected. Your trip out of here cost you twenty grand of that. You paid me another ten for my trouble. Thanks.”

&nb
sp; “You’re welcome”, I said, looking at the much diminished stack of chips in my hand. “So, where are we going, and when do we leave?”

  “You leave in two hours aboard a cargo ship; an independent. For security- mine, and the ship’s- you’ll find out the name of the ship and where it’s heading once you’re aboard. Should you get picked up before that, you can’t tell anyone anything you don’t know.”

  “So we leave in two hours?” Cozi asked.

  “Nope, we leave now. It’ll take all the time we have to get around all the security here. ”She handed us both a pair of shades. “You’ll need to wear those. About ninety-percent of all access control is via retinal scan, a fact they’d just as soon you didn’t know. The shades do a very nice job of fucking that up. Also, if you use any touch screens, it’s highly likely your prints will be scanned too. If you have to touch one, wear gloves. Another thing. No talking. We’re trying to prevent their knowing where you are, and there are video and audio pickups everywhere. The shades will mess up a facial scan too, but if they get a voice print, you’re screwed. Now, did you guys find something to eat?”

  “Yeah, we ate a couple of times”, I said.

  “Good”, she said. “Now, if you’ll hand over the guns, we can get going.”

  “Shit”, Cozi said, with feeling.

  “I’d rather not”, I said.

  “Are they like black market? Maybe old ones?” Cozi asked.

  “Black market, yes, old, no… they’re new, not that it matters to either of you”, she said. “Just because they look similar to something you saw in a museum or on a vid doesn’t mean they’re old. The basic design of firearms hasn’t changed in a couple hundred years, because it works. You still hold them in your hands; they still fire projectiles of one sort or another. But you’d already know that if you knew anything about guns, which neither of you do. So hand them over.”

  Reluctantly, Cozi and I did so. She stowed them in her own bag, slung over one shoulder.

  “Now let’s get out of here”, she said.

  We did.

  She hadn’t been kidding about the two hours it would take to get to the ship. There was an awful lot of creeping around in service tunnels and peering around corners, as we avoided the main areas of the port. Eventually, we reached a terminal tube, which was connected to the airlock of a ship. The outer airlock door was open, the inner one closed.

  Kyra walked up, and tapped in a code on the keypad beside the airlock. It irised open with a whoosh, and we walked in. It quickly closed behind us.

  “Welcome aboard the Ming Shu, gentlemen”, she said. “I suggest you behave, or the Security Officer will yank your balls off and toss you out that airlock right behind you.”

  “Will you be coming too?’ Cozi asked. “Or are you done watching Doon?”

  “Yes, I’ll be joining you, sort of. I’ve signed on for the voyage as ship’s Security Officer.” She grinned at us.

  “Oh”, I said. “Can we at least find out where we’re going now?”

  “Next stop, Iapetus”, she said. “We’ll be there in about eighty days, so I hope you packed a chess set and plenty of porn. Now, let’s get you to your quarters. We lift in less than an hour.”

  I smiled at Cozi. We were headed for Saturn.

  Chapter 7

  The first four days aboard the Ming Shu were a lot like my previous two voyages; I spent a lot of time in my quarters getting to know the acceleration couch. We were underway at one gee, which wasn’t bad, but still took some getting used to. I’d roam around the ship for a while, get tired, and retire to my cabin and rest up for my next foray. Climbing up and down the ladder between the decks was really taking a toll on my arms.

  As soon as we’d gotten aboard, Kyra laid out how she expected us to behave, in no uncertain terms. One, we weren’t to discuss things with the crew. The less they knew the better for us. Two, this especially included what had happened on Io, and three, if we mentioned to anyone that she was being paid to watch me, we’d prefer a walk out of the airlock to the alternative. Fourth, we were not to bother her or the crew and, last, but not least, we were not to fuck with anything on the ship.

  Beyond that, we had free reign to wander about, at least in those areas no one threw us out of. The Bridge, as always, was off limits. Within twenty four hours, we’d managed to break almost all her rules except for one in particular; we were avoiding her like the plague, so thus far, she wasn’t being bothered, at least not by us.

  The Ming Shu was a Reliant-class cargo ship, built by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries at their Earth-orbital shipyard. Still, it was laid out along the same basic lines as most contemporary spaceships. The engines (or drives, as they insisted on calling them) were located at the “bottom” of the ship, and the Bridge was at the other end, or “top” of the ship. Since “down” was always the same direction while aboard (unless you were at zero gee, which was uncommon), then the floor was always in the same place, a fact that people seem to find important.

  In between the Bridge and engines were several large modules containing various parts of the ship, often divided by function. All the modules were built around and connected by a central conduit that ran the length of the ship. It was usually called the “core”, and you got from one module to another by climbing up or down the core. On the Valkyrie, they’d had an elevator.

  As noted, the Bridge module sat at the very top of the core. Beneath that was the Habitat module, which had three internal levels, or decks, of its own. The top deck contained the MedLab, a gymnasium, the kitchen, and the galley, the latter doubling as the general meeting and recreation area.

  Mid-deck housed the crew quarters, with eight individual cabins, the Captain’s stateroom, and most of the life support equipment. They also had their own `fresher.

  The bottom deck of the Habitat module contained twelve individual cabins intended for passengers, most of which were empty, as the Captain preferred a different type of cargo.

  The next three modules beneath the Habitat were all cargo sections, each level with six huge bays, giving the Ming eighteen bays in all, and a capacity of around two hundred tons of cargo, when fully loaded.

  Under the cargo modules, sitting directly atop the engines, was the engineering module. There were the manual engine controls, a machine shop, and a small nuclear reactor, used to generate electricity for the ship.

  At about a hundred fifty yards stem to stern (or top to bottom, as it were), the Ming Shu was only about two thirds the size of the Valkyrie, but carried a lot more cargo. She was also faster. The specs said a Reliant could hit a max of two gees, which meant we were just loping along. There was only a crew of six, which was about the minimum you’d want to leave port with. Kyra had introduced us to the crew over the first few days. It was obvious she’d spaced with some of them before, but she didn’t offer any details, and since I was getting tired of her scowling at me, I didn’t ask.

  You could operate a ship (especially a cargo ship) with less than six crewmembers, but it wasn’t advisable. Most crew had their primary jobs, and were probably competent at one or two others, as backup. If someone was already doing two critical jobs, and you lost them (for some reason), then you’d really be screwed.

  The Ming Shu was owned and helmed by Captain Virgil Seo (pronounced So), who seemed to be a quiet, no-nonsense kind of guy; not at all the sort I’d have imagined as a smuggler. His Executive Officer (and second-in-command) was a short, dumpy little woman named Layla Lui. What Layla lacked in looks, she made up for with personality. While the captain was bland and inscrutable, she was outgoing and funny. She even flirted with me. Both she and Seo were middle-aged and of Asian descent, and I wondered if they were a couple, but I couldn’t tell. Layla was in charge of stellar navigation, also known as astrogation; a job which largely consisted of making sure the AI didn’t fuck up. She also acted as backup to Seo, and as his XO, actually handled managing most of the minutia involved with running a ship. The remaining crew
included Kyra, as Security Officer, who was in charge of ensuring the safety of the ship, the cargo and everyone aboard. She was also responsible for riding herd on any passengers, which for this trip was only me, Cozi, and some tall skinny guy who never left his cabin, except for the occasional meal or trip to the `fresher, (which inexplicably, they insisted on calling the head). Regardless, he avoided us, and we avoided him.

  The Medical Officer was a guy named Dumro. The rest of the crew called him Dumbo, which he seemed to be okay with. He was the ship doctor, and was also in charge of the life support systems. He too was on the lower end of middle age, probably mid to late forties, and was trim, if not athletic. He had a disconcerting habit of letting his mind wander off in the middle of conversations. I don’t know where he was going, but it must have been nice, because he went there a lot. This, coupled with the lack of confidence the nickname “Dumbo” instilled, made me resolve not to get sick over the next couple of months.

  That left Mike, the Cargo Master, and the ship’s Engineer, who had the unpronounceable (at least for me) name of Zcberkna Kyncado. Everyone called him “Tex”, presumably of the Free Republic of Texas, where the people chose to speak with a ridiculous twang, and took a great amount of pride in being obstinate. At least, that’s what I’d heard on Luna. He wore a large, odd-looking hat, whose function I could not discern. Kyra mentioned that he was from one of the big Lagrange colonies, located between the Earth and Luna (and nowhere near the real Texas), so maybe the hat was an ethnic thing. In his defense, that particular Lagrange did have a lot of people from Texas. I wondered if they all called themselves Tex.

  Everyone on the crew, Kyra included, spoke Chinese. Sometimes they’d switch to English when we were around, sometimes not. It was Seo’s ship, and like his predilection for hiring those of Asian ancestry, whatever rules he chose were the rules, and if you didn’t like them, tough. I still thought it was rude, but in their culture, maybe it wasn’t. Cozi claimed to be able to understand them a little, when they were speaking slowly, which (as I pointed out to him) was almost never.