Interstellar gunrunner, p.7
Interstellar Gunrunner, page 7
To handle that issue, I enlisted Momura’s help in temporarily distracting our new recruit. My instructions were very specific: “Take her to the pantry; let her eat whatever she wants. And don’t tell her this is a gunrunning ship. Or that we’re not part of the Hegemony. Or anything important.”
While Momura took care of that, I proceeded with the repulsive task of clearing out Telazin’s den of sin. Considering the amount of nudie holograms, pleasure-sim headsets, and lewd paraphernalia I found packed into that hovel, I’m surprised Telazin ever got any paintings done. Anyway, once I’d done away with all that and coated the room in a thick antibacterial paste, I sought out Momura and Gadra.
As soon as I entered the pantry, I realized Momura had bungled her job.
Gadra was wielding a butcher’s knife in the far corner, encircled by spilled grains and the contents of shattered jars. Upon seeing me, her little brown eyes blazed with fury. “Liar!”
Momura half-shrugged at me, keeping her hands raised in a gesture of surrender.
“So what happened?” I asked.
“She’s pretty bright,” Momura said.
“Yeah, evidently. What a mess.”
“You lied,” Gadra hissed. “You told my sister that I was going to the ’cademy!”
“Academy,” I corrected.
“That’s what I said!”
“Okay, listen. There’s an easy explanation for all this. And if you don’t put that knife down, you’re going to hurt yourself.”
“No way.”
“Yes way.” Like I said, I was helpless with children. They were an entirely different species—a feral, illogical organism with no concept of shame. Very volatile. “You don’t want to go to Halcium Beta anyway. Trust me.”
She turned the knife toward me. “My sister said if anybody kidnapped me, I should—”
“Nobody kidnapped you,” I shot back. “I told your sister something half-true to enlist your services. No, I’m not from an academy. But I am going to give you an exciting life. And one that’s much better compensated than an artist on any Hegemony planet.”
Gadra just knotted her brow further. “I don’t know what any of that means.”
“Count yourself lucky. This world’s too complicated, Gad. And if you don’t make your own way, you’ll spend your whole life wishing you did.”
“Huh?”
Alright, clearly the existential angle wasn’t going to work. I had to come at this from a position near and dear to my own heart. Once upon a time, I’d been Gadra. Or rather, I’d been the same lump of potential that had given rise to someone like Gadra. I knew what it was like to be worthless, to be cast adrift in a universe that wanted to drain you of all your worth and throw away the pulp.
“Why don’t we take a walk?” I said to Gadra, softer now. “There’s a lot of fun stuff on this ship for a kid.”
She lowered the knife a few degrees, but didn’t relent. “So I get to fly around in this thing?”
“Yes.”
“Oh.” Gadra gave a tremendous sigh, her body sagging like an accordion. She wiped the sweat from her brow and let the knife drop to her waist. “Why didn’t you just say so?”
From there, I took Gadra on my galaxy-famous tour of Stream Dancer, making sure to emphasize the passable recreation module and functioning cold-water showers. In contrast to most of the other recruits who’d come aboard in past years, Gadra seemed impressed by the vessel’s dimensions. Perhaps it was due to her small stature, or her limited experience aboard interstellar ships. Whatever the case, it helped to sell her on the experience of being a nomadic painter. Note my use of the word “helped.” There was still plenty of persuasion in order—that much was glaringly obvious.
“It’s not right,” she said as we moved down the central spine. “We should take Tumna, too.”
“She wouldn’t get it,” I replied. “You see, some people are too protective of the people they love. And she’d think this was all too dangerous for you. Do you get that?”
“Well, is it dangerous?”
“No, not really. I mean, not most of the time. No.”
“But she’s—”
“Are you worried about her?”
Gadra nodded with her head hung low. “She’s my sister. And I’m gonna miss her real bad.”
“Tell you what,” I said, stopping midstride to face her. “Once we run this… errand… we’ll send a bunch of bux back to her. Alright?”
“How much?”
“I don’t know. A million.”
“A million?” Her eyes looked ready to pop out of her skull.
“Yeah,” I said, “maybe two million. And maybe then she’ll want to join us, right?”
“I guess so.”
“Does she know how to cook?”
“A little.”
“Good enough. We need a cook on board.”
Gadra flashed a toothy little smile. “Okay.”
Weighing on my mind, however, was the unspoken pressure of Shalguth’s approval. If Shalguth didn’t care for the girl’s paintings, she was worse than a stowaway—she was a liability. Therefore, it was imperative that Shalguth at least accept her style as much as he’d accepted Telazin’s. And even if he did, there was still the matter of the girl’s cooperation in producing paintings that suited Shalguth. This was the real sticking point. If I understood anything about children, it was their notorious resistance to following directions.
To my pleasant surprise, Gadra wasn’t the least bit fazed by the godengine’s esoteric runes or gloomy, industrial atmosphere. If anything, she treated it as whimsical. She giggled as we continued toward the gullet, using her tiny hands to swirl the fog into eddies.
“We’re going to talk to an invisible person in here,” I told her just outside the entrance. “Don’t be afraid if you hear it in your head. Alright?”
She nodded. “Why are they invisible?”
“It’s complicated. But I need you to remember two things about them, alright?”
“’Kay.”
“Number one: you never go in there without me, Momura, or Ruena.” I paused, waiting for her nod of confirmation. “And number two—this is the most important one: if you ever feel the ship start to shake like one of those quakes back on Makalma, you run to the closest room, face the wall, and close your eyes. Okay?”
“What happens if I don’t?”
“Promise me.”
“Okay, okay,” she huffed. “What’s the invisible person’s name?”
“Shalguth.”
“How big are they?”
“Big. I think.”
“Are they ugly?”
“I have no idea.”
She shrugged and headed in without me. I hurried after her.
“What is this… small one?” Shalguth said, his words slithering through my consciousness. “Is it an attempt at a meal? I do not eat flesh, Bodhi.”
“No, no,” I said hastily, “she’s our new artist. Telazin had an accident.”
“Ah. He has returned to the void.”
“Yeah. Something like that.”
Shalguth hummed. His presence fluttered around me, stirring my overcoat and Gadra’s leggings. She cackled in delight. “This one has so much… vitality in her. Such joy.”
“Careful,” I said, “she’s a live wire.”
“All the better,” Shalguth said.
“So what is this place?” Gadra asked. She ran a hand along the smooth, cylindrical wall and gazed into the purple light underfoot. “Is it the ship’s brain?”
“What?” I said. “No. This is what makes the ship go to faraway places. And guess what? You’re the one who makes that happen.” Shalguth’s presence crackled against my skin. “Well, the two of you make that happen together.”
“We do?”
“Yes. And you know how?”
“Nope.”
“With your art, Gad.”
“No joking?”
“No joking.” I looked down into the light as though Shalguth resided there. “You’re gonna love her stuff. It’s downright experimental.”
“Experimental…” Shalguth whispered. “This word pleases me.”
“Just wait until you see what she pumps out.” I lifted my wrist-embedded transmitter implant and gave Momura a life-or-death order to bring me a small canvas, some oil paint, and Telazin’s best brush. She arrived an impressive two minutes and ten seconds later, her cheeks scarlet and chest heaving. “Thanks, Mo. Get yourself a beer.”
Momura handed off the supplies to Gadra from the safety of the gullet’s threshold, studying me with barely masked scorn. “This was life or death?”
“We’re all dying a second at a time,” I told her, winking.
If Momura spat a retort back at me, I didn’t hear it. I was too busy watching Gadra lay her canvas out on the floor and get to work. And let me tell you, she worked. Nothing moves a creator’s hands faster than youth. You see, youth imparts a certain vigor, but more than that, a daring and careless attitude that arises from limited self-awareness. Children are oblivious to the pressure of how the audience will receive their works. This may explain how Gadra was able to produce a radiant, avant garde rendition of a tenement building in under ten minutes, grinning and humming all the while.
The painting was breathtaking, but I couldn’t fully appreciate it. Not yet. All the pressure of Gadra’s creation was suddenly hoisted upon me and could only be dispelled by Shalguth’s praise.
For long, teeth-gritting seconds, Shalguth was silent. Then a never-before-experienced warbling filled the gullet. His voice swirled into my mind, saying, “This is… it. The essence of creation.”
My legs were shaking. “So, it’s good?”
“Good, bad,” Shalguth said. “Such a depiction cannot be captured by your language. With this image, my mind has expanded into new folds of the boundless void. I have witnessed a dewdrop of your world through the lens of new life.”
“So… it’s really good?”
“I will offer you eighty light-years for this commodity,” Shalguth said. “Will you accept my offer?”
I could’ve wept with glee right then and there. Telazin’s eleven-day masterpieces had only netted me sixty light-years at best—and even then, such a deal had required significant haggling on my part. In ten minutes, Gadra had established herself as a master of creation itself. In Shalguth’s eyes, anyway. But those were the only eyes that mattered.
Despite my attempts at self-restraint, I couldn’t resist beaming and ruffling Gadra’s hair as though she were my own spawn. She shied away, smiling. “It’s a fair offer,” I said to Shalguth, “but let’s settle on eighty-five.”
A key component of optimizing crew performance and hitting rigorous goals is a reward system. Even if I sometimes present myself as a hard-nosed leader, you must remember that I am not blind to efforts that exceed my expectations. Of course, it would be terrible to reward a crew for doing their designated tasks flawlessly. That much is expected. But when a member of my crew managed to do their job in a way that directly benefited me and my business, they were entitled to a reward. Gadra’s lightning-fast painting had probably netted me the equivalent of over twenty million bux in terms of time, resources, and mobility.
In keeping with this, I felt she was owed a sum proportionate to her contribution.
“Here you are,” I said, handing her a swipecard just outside the godengine. “There are fifty whole bux loaded onto this bad boy.”
Her eyes lit up. “Fifty?”
“That’s right, Gad. Don’t you spend it all in one place.”
“Oh, I won’t. I’ll save it. That’s what Tumna told me to do—save, save, save.”
“Such an idea can be useful,” I said, “but here’s your first lesson about commerce: saving never made anybody wealthy. You have to actively employ that wealth to build a stream of passive income.”
Gadra squinted at me. The cogs were clunking around in her head. “Oh.”
“Don’t worry. You’ll learn plenty in time.”
“If you say so, mister.”
“Please,” I said, “call me Bodhi.”
“If you say so, Bodhi.”
I led Gadra around the yet-unexplored modules of the ship, introducing her to dubious crew members and making a taut face that screamed, “Not a single word, any of you.” Now that she’d been embraced by Shalguth and confirmed as a permanent member of our patchwork crew, I figured she had clearance to see the loud, clanking parts of the ship, too. She’d get used to them in time. I even showed her the bridge and let her poke Umzuma’s tendrils (he didn’t complain, which I took as tacit toleration of the act).
At this point you may think that Gadra’s employment was irresponsible, if not criminal, based on my lack of experience with children. And it was. Hence, I designated my aide Cahari to be Gadra’s older brother, and Momura to be Gadra’s stand-in mother. They all seemed pleased with this arrangement, though I suspect Momura was mostly relieved to no longer be held at knifepoint.
At the conclusion of the tour, I showed Gadra how to reprogram and access the biometric door panel to her quarters, then waited outside. I was momentarily concerned she might reject her new habitat, finding it too cold, too small, or too austere. If she had an accurate estimate of just how valuable she was to this entire operation, she would surely demand more. Then I recalled the home in which she’d been raised.
It seemed that she hadn’t forgotten it, either, because a squeal of delight burst through the doorway. I heard her bare feet clomping as she leaped up and down, rattling the floor panels.
And for a moment, a small, decent moment, I felt like I’d done some good in the world.
Then Umzuma forwarded the job information to my neural implant.
The Mesh, Sector Three. Pink stimplant clinic. You’ll know the one. Look for the sudrona with a gun on its shoulder.
Eight
Unlike Makalma proper, which evoked a strain of cloying nostalgia, the Mesh made me feel nothing but dread. And it wasn’t just due to its role as a planet-strangling testament to corporate takeovers. No, I was more affected by the fact that the Mesh was where all of my hustling, industrious friends from the surface had been murdered.
This tragic phenomenon makes perfect sense when you consider the logistics. If you’re keen on running slaves, narcotics, or other nasties to distant worlds, it’s far more feasible to produce and export things in orbit. The low cost of moving mass around is the main advantage, but there are also added bonuses such as less exposure to ambushes, rapid transit time, and, in the case of Makalma, access to starlight.
This is good and well if you’re the lone enterprise operating above a planet, but things get heated—and pushy—when you start crowding a dozen opportunistic bastards together, let alone a hundred of them. Last I’d heard, the Mesh was pushing upwards of forty-one thousand registered corporations and other private holdings. Compounding that problem was the importance of location. Every business entity, and I do mean every, had aspirations of installing their property on the outermost layer of the Mesh. There, they could bask in that unlimited solar power, not to mention outrace everybody else in shipping or receiving materials.
Put all those ingredients in the pressure cooker of a crime world, and you’ll understand why so many of my pals ended up shot, sliced, strangled, splattered, or spat out into the vacuum. There was no way to get ahead in the Mesh without also getting noticed.
Considering the fate that awaited me if I failed to pick up Nerikhad’s liaison, however, I was willing to set my feelings aside.
After winding our way through forty-eight minutes of flashy, ship-clogged lanes and tariff checkpoints, we arrived in Sector Three. Not wanting Nerikhad to suspect any funny business, I opted to disembark down the aluminum docking tunnel with a lone Scuttler at my side.
Sector Three was a colossal commercial station, built using funds from God knows how many greedy pricks with their own wine-producing planets and designer dog-bird breeds. But I’m not bitter about it. Anyway, Sector Three is best imagined as a long, gravity-defying cylinder that uses every square inch of real estate to sell you something. The sparkling, strobing holo-boards alone are enough to make the uninitiated vomit. When you factor in the hundreds of fabriques handing out samples and pumping computer-generated Muzak into the air, it’s hard to view Sector Three as anything beyond a never-ending advertisement.
My Scuttler did an admirable job of swatting away unwanted cologne samples and body-devouring massage suits, but it was still overwhelming. It left me little room to think. And right before your murderous employer sends you on a job, you’d do well to think.
One small, niggling thought did manage to slip through the chaos as I neared the claw-your-eyes-out-pink stimplant clinic. It was a thought that you, the studious reader, may have grasped during my explanation of the sudrona.
On most jobs, there is some wiggle room for how you proceed with business. For example, employers generally expect you to “take a little off the top” during your dirty work, allowing you to recoup the cost of whatever fuel, ammunition, or other supplies you expend. Another example of “wiggle” is how you accomplish your given objective. If you’re contracted to get rid of a colony, there’s no functional difference between vaporizing it and selling the prefab structures that comprise the colony to a third party. The same goes for “dealing with” a troublesome person. Why murder your target when you can convince them to change their DNA, move to a new system, and undermine your employer using an alias?
But there would be zero wiggle room on this job. Forget bribing the liaison—being a sudrona, Nerikhad would expect them to bump colonies when they reconvened after the fact. That meant anything I did, whether remarkable or unforgivable, would be streamed directly into Nerikhad’s memory. It also meant that I had to be extremely cautious in dealing with this liaison. If they so much as glimpsed one of my other secrets—namely Left and Right, which nobody aside from my senior officers and Cahari knew about—I was done.
