Interstellar gunrunner, p.6
Interstellar Gunrunner, page 6
“You could use your social acumen to procure artwork on loan,” Right said.
“That’s exactly how I got into this mess,” I replied.
Right danced around the interior of its icebox. “Do you recall what you told us the first time we requested to be joined, Bodhi?”
“Not a clue.”
“You said that action is required to achieve a reaction. You will not achieve anything if you spend your time wallowing and fail to proceed with the job you’ve been offered.”
“Pah, offered,” I spat. “And I’m not wallowing!” As if on cue, the flaps of my bathrobe parted and revealed my dangly bits to the two constructs. I hastily retied the garment back in place, then said, “Okay, maybe I’m wallowing a bit. But that’s because there’s nothing else to do. Even if I go scoop up that liaison, we have no way to get them to the job site because we’re short on pinching fuel. And on standard fuel, too. And on bux.”
“Sometimes, resources are not required for optimal outcomes,” Left said.
I drained the last of the liquor. “Lies.”
“What about Nalosa?”
If I hadn’t wrung out all my tears like a sponge in a vise, I would’ve cried at that. But I was dry, not to mention violently drunk. “We don’t talk about her.”
“Why not?”
“Because we don’t.”
Right’s smile dimmed as it approached the glass. “Left is merely illustrating a point, Bodhi. Sentient beings have been known to cooperate without any promise of personal gain. If you and Nalosa could develop such a relationship, perhaps you can develop it with another sentient being.”
“Nobody will replace her,” I said, feeling suddenly uneasy about receiving dating advice from a pair of scheming constructs. “And besides, this isn’t the time to get tangled up with someone. We’re supposed to run a job in five days.”
“We are not recommending a romantic relationship,” Right said. “But rather one of communal trust and understanding.”
“Like… a friendship?”
“Yes.”
I blinked at Left, then Right. For the first time, I contemplated the possibility that they knew more about making friends than I did.
“It takes a long time to make friends,” I said.
“Sometimes,” Left replied. “But if you can find enough common ground, perhaps you can overcome the temporal barrier and establish a deep friendship at an accelerated rate.”
“Huh.” I set my bottles down and paced across the machine hub, thinking aloud. “Make friends… get free stuff.”
Right hummed against the glass. “Well, friendship is more about…”
“You two are geniuses! I’d kiss you right now if, you know, the iceboxes weren’t in the way.”
“Are you going to join us?” Left said, expanding its face into an oversized pancake against the glass.
“Join you?” I chuckled, gathered up the bottles, and headed for the boarding ramp. “Not today, my friends, but soon!”
Things were still dark—both in a figurative and literal sense—but now I had a light at the end of the tunnel. The solution to my catastrophe had been right under my nose all along: I had to make a friend. Not an easy task, but a specific and tangible one.
However, making friends is very similar to making love. If you are desperate for it to happen, the odds of success are drastically lower than if you approach it in an organic, noncommittal manner. Once again, this social paradox can be explained by the concept of demand. My hunger for a friend placed me in a position of extreme demand. This is a poor position from which to bargain. Any merchant who senses demand, consciously or unconsciously, will begin angling to see just how badly you want the product in question. And as a result, you will end up paying far more than you’d initially hoped. Telazin probably learned this truth while hiring an escort in the hours before his death.
To sidestep that hang-up, I cooked up a plan. Please do not judge me excessively for how it turned out.
Prior to every instance of the crew ending shore leave and filing back onto Stream Dancer, I always performed a contraband check near the boarding ramp. This time was no exception. I lined the crew up in the dripping, brine-smelling cavern of the Haunt’s hangar, calling each person forward as ships thundered overhead. My Scuttler fabriques stood at attention to facilitate the process.
Only six of my crew members, the cream of the crop, were permitted to board the ship. The other twelve were reprimanded for their “antics” throughout Vitalyna’s Haunt. In actuality, I had no idea what any of them had really done during their stint here. Furthermore, keep in mind that at this point, none of them had heard about Telazin’s death, nor about our upcoming job. Thus, it may seem hypocritical for me to lecture them about such things. But. And this is a huge, wiggly but… nearly all of them hung their heads in shame as I carried on. They were all guilty of one moral violation or another, even if I didn’t know the specifics.
This made me feel warranted in collecting the remnants of their swipecards. Most had an average of a hundred bux still loaded. Then I commanded the chastised crew members to return to the concourse and await a further tongue-lashing. They plodded off in a pathetic herd.
As soon as they’d vanished from sight, I boarded Stream Dancer, made my way to the bridge, and told Umzuma to get us up to the surface. Our destination was the city that had launched my illustrious career as an organ-runner: Glimfallow. If any spirited, enterprising souls existed on Makalma, they’d be found in that hellhole. It breeds ambition.
Do I regret the circumstances under which I abandoned twelve of my crew members? Yes, sometimes. Do I feel it was necessary? Of course. When a business is in dire financial straits, the most sensible option is to cut extraneous costs. And since Stream Dancer could technically function with a skeleton crew, at least for short periods of time, the personnel were the first to go.
On the way to Glimfallow, I gathered the remaining crew—with the exception of Ruena and Umzuma—in the briefing module. They sat patiently in half-moon chairs, skeptically regarding the once-occupied seats around them.
I didn’t sugarcoat anything for them, nor did I skirt around the issue. Standing atop the module’s lone stage, I said, “Dear comrades, I regret to inform you that an incident occurred at midnight on Vitalyna’s Haunt. Telazin was murdered by a disgruntled lender due to his bux-laundering activities and poor manners.” All six of the crew members began murmuring amongst themselves. “Hold on, hold on. That isn’t the worst of it. With Telazin’s dying breath, he also confessed to me that he’d been carrying on illicit affairs with twelve members of the crew. These crew members were wrapped up in Telazin’s bux-laundering operations and had been leeching bux from our shared account. I had no choice but to release them from duty.”
Momura, a young engineer with a hydraulic spine, shook her head and crinkled up her face. “I can’t believe they’d do that. It’s unbelievable.”
I shook my head. “One hundred percent unbelievable.”
Cahari looked most disgusted of all.
“Indeed, Cahari,” I said. “Thankfully, I’m surrounded by a crew with big hearts and an even bigger sense of trust. I couldn’t do any of this without you. Now, let’s just take a few days on Makalma for… repairs. Yes, repairs sound good.”
And with that unsavory business out of the way, we proceeded to Glimfallow.
As I explored the cramped, halogen-bathed bazaars of Glimfallow, I was reminded of how far I’d come since my youth—and how far I had managed to backslide in a matter of hours.
If my story about working for a smuggling cartel with Girda didn’t give you a useful impression of Glimfallow, consider this: Glimfallow was a city that knew it would not last. It had been built upon terraforming plates so vast one could see them from space, intended to serve as a permanent home for millions of Makalman settlers, only to be abandoned once the planet’s initial design firm realized that the underlying coral structures were too weak to support a megacity. Consequently, Glimfallow was perpetually sliding into the toxic oceans that surrounded it and gushed up through its sinkholes.
Walking the streets again, I realized that the ocean was an apt metaphor for the city’s poverty. Nobody here expected anything other than corruption, plagues, and violence. This was useful for me, in that it raised my demand as a well-to-do captain and lowered the inhibitions of those who might become my friend. All I needed was a headstrong young pup like I’d once been.
My ideal friend candidate was somebody who had something functional to offer me, whether it was currency, leverage, connections, fuel, or talent. Considering my situation, any one of those things would serve as a temporary salve. This hypothetical friend would also be intelligent, but not so intelligent as to question my motives in recruiting them or taking advantage of their services so early in our relationship.
As I strolled past stall after stall, I accrued a sizable amount of attention. Whether the masses were drawn to my lavish (albeit bloodstained) overcoat, my rugged features, or the pair of high-alert Scuttler fabriques trundling along at my side, I’ll never know. But it didn’t really matter. Little by little, the Glimfallow merchants, beggars, and hopefuls began approaching me in droves.
“Need a bracelet? Homemade, only ten bux!”
“Have you got a ship, sir? I can polish it real nice!”
“Any interest in buying a bear cloned from real Earth DNA?”
I was admittedly tempted by the bear offer, but at that moment, I was operating on a hair-thin budget. Even if I purchased the creature, I’d be unable to provide a steady supply of food. The crew was barely managing on quarter-rations.
And so the spectacle went on for days… and days… and days, providing me with a seemingly endless chain of friend candidates. I became something of a minor celebrity in Glimfallow’s bazaar, representing the only way off Makalma. Everything from grandmothers to mercenaries packing spliced frog DNA approached me, all offering this service or that product. By the do-or-die fifth day, I was feeling nauseated. All these people wanted was my money. And that’s no foundation for a friendship. Especially when you don’t have much money.
I was preparing to pack it up and slink back for my doomed final hours on Stream Dancer when a woman came running through the crowd, waving her arms at me.
“Wait,” she said, low on breath, “don’t go just yet!”
My fabriques turned toward her, engaging their targeting sequence, but I put an end to that with a shake of my head. I beckoned her closer with a curling finger.
When she got up close, I realized she was hardly a woman. Indeed, she was much closer to a girl, though the years on Makalma had done their best to dismantle her youthful appearance. Her cheeks had jagged radiation splotches, and despite the cloth wrapped around her head, I could see the sparseness of her hairline.
“Will you come with me?” she asked, huffing as she regarded my fabriques. “Please?”
“What for?”
“Well, you’re from the academy, aren’t you? You’ve been recruiting?”
“Academy?” Then I saw the hope in her eyes. Hope that could be easily converted to demand, given the right context. “Oh, yes, the academy. I’m from that. There. The academy.”
She looked ready to sweep me up in a hug. Probably might have if not for the fabriques stationed on either side of us. “Come on! I’ve got someone you can’t miss.”
“Alright. But I’m short on time, so…”
“It’s not far,” she said. “I’m Tumna, by the way.”
I nodded respectfully. “Bodhi Drezek, at your service.”
Tumna led us westward out of the bazaar and into the heart of Deeptilt, one of the city’s worst neighborhoods. And let me assure you, I’m not overselling the description. On our first day in Glimfallow, Girda and I had sworn a pact that we’d kill ourselves before we ever moved into Deeptilt. We meant it. Deeptilt is the sort of place where the smell alternates between burning refuse and corpses left to rot in the gutters. Every building is secured with military-grade shutters and lethal traps.
Gunfire thumped a few streets over, causing my fabriques to rack their chain guns’ bolts. I swore I heard the screech of a rocket, too.
Before I could come to my senses and turn tail, however, Tumna descended a set of steps and waited for me. I left my fabriques behind and followed. At the bottom was a dented, rust-flaked door secured with five locks. Tumna undid each of them, pounded out a secret code with the flat of her fist, and opened the door.
Inside was a pair of low-ceilinged concrete rooms that must’ve passed as a living space. Both rooms were lit by one industrial lamp, probably pilfered from a construction site.
“Gadra?” Tumna said.
A moment later, a girl with long black hair emerged from the room at the back of the “dwelling.” She looked to be about eleven, but again, Makalma had a habit of aging people well beyond their years. Her hands were smeared with paint up to her elbows. She was barefoot, dressed in scrunched-up beige pants and a sleeveless tunic.
“Who’s this?” she said.
“This is a recruiter from the academy,” Tumna explained. “Why don’t you show him what you’ve made?”
The girl, Gadra, studied me with eyes so black they might’ve been buttons. “’Kay.”
Tumna guided me toward Gadra’s apparent workroom, then excused herself to prepare some coffee. I had no idea where she planned to make coffee, but I walked ahead anyway.
And oh, was I glad I did.
Have you ever imagined how it would feel, being the first person to discovery a visionary’s talent? Even if you had no role in producing anything a prodigy ever made, you’d still feel a swell of pride, wouldn’t you? After all, your discovery would be instrumental in bringing their creations to the world. You would be regarded as a patron of brilliance, a tutor to a virtuoso.
This is what I felt upon entering Gadra’s room. She hadn’t produced a thing on canvas—instead, she’d applied her paint directly to the concrete walls, forming a mural of such soul-stirring beauty that it defies language. Not even the most vivid sunsets or graphically magnificent sim files can come close to approximating what Gadra had created using frayed brushes, homemade paint, and a bit of charcoal.
If there is a God, it spoke to me through this child.
I don’t know how long I stood there, enchanted by that wall of wonder, but approaching footsteps returned me to the doldrums of reality.
When Tumna entered the room with a jug of coffee and clay cups, I said, “We’ll take her.”
She just about dropped everything. “Really?”
“Yes,” I said, my eyes darting between Gadra’s monument and the girl herself. She looked somewhat embarrassed, if not annoyed. “We’d like to enroll her immediately.”
Tumna’s lips parted, shook, then closed. Tears trickled down her cheeks.
“To be clear,” I said, “we’ll need to enroll her today. The new… session… starts soon, and I wouldn’t want her to miss anything.”
“Oh. Of course.”
“Really?” I paused, remembering myself. “I mean, good. Very good.”
“Where’s the academy?” Gadra asked.
I’d almost forgotten she was there. “It’s, uh…”
“On Halcium Beta, sis,” Tumna said excitedly.
Gadra frowned. “Where’s that?”
Halcium Beta, if you’re not aware, is something of a “proving ground” for those who haven’t yet been inducted into the Halcius Hegemony’s esteemed “Pureborn” club. If your planet gets conquered and you want to emigrate to the good life on Halcium Alpha, then be ready for a lengthy trial period on Beta. A long, boring trial period, at that, full of indoctrination and civil service. But none of that really mattered in Tumna’s apartment, because as we both know, neither Gadra nor I were going anywhere near Hegemony planets. Or so I thought.
“It’s a long way away,” I told Gadra. “I promise, though, that you’ll have an exciting life. And learn a lot of… stuff.”
Gadra shifted on her feet, uncertain, then looked to her sister. “Should I go?”
“Yes!” Tumna said. “This is what Mum and Dad would’ve wanted. They always knew you’d get in. We just had to wait and pray, you see?”
But Gadra didn’t seem so convinced. She eyed me with the same degree of doubt and shrewd cunning as Grand Mediator Kemedis.
All I could offer in response was a weak chuckle and a nod. I’ve never been good with children.
Mercifully, Tumna held up a finger, gesturing to grant her a minute’s time, then slipped into the other room and rifled through some boxes. She returned with a tarnished swipecard. “It’s not much, but I think it should pay her first month’s tuition… right? There’s five hundred on there. It’s all I have.”
I looked at the swipecard, then at the crooked, callused hand holding it. “Well, I have some good news, Tumna. There’s actually a scholarship program at the moment. And I think Gadra’s good enough to get into that program on merit alone.”
Before I could shy away, Tumna rushed forward and gripped me in a kidney-aching hug. I could feel her sobbing against my shoulder.
“There, there…” I said awkwardly, trying to shrug my way out of the embrace. Once she was off me, I rooted around in my pockets and withdrew a handful of the crew’s recycled swipecards. I looked them over, picked out the two with the most bux left on them, and extended them to Tumna. “This is a credit. You know, for supplying a good applicant.”
Tumna wiped her eyes with the back of her wrist and gave me a wobbly smile. “I can’t take this.”
“You can,” I said, grabbing her right hand and wrapping her fingers around the swipecards. Then I looked at Gadra, who studied me with such intense scrutiny that I worried my face might crack in half. “It’s really the least I can do.”
Seven
Only after Gadra had come aboard Stream Dancer did I realize I hadn’t discarded Telazin’s property. As you’ve surely surmised from my descriptions of the old man, he was a lascivious one, which here means “obsessed with things that are beyond inappropriate for an impressionable girl to have in her quarters.”
