Time Salvager (4 page)
It took James a few moments to realize where he was. He froze, glancing in both directions before dissolving the kinetic coil. He had been dreaming when this poor soul had tried to wake him. Fortunately, the dream had already faded from memory, though it wasn’t hard for James to guess what it was about. He only had nightmares these days.
He glanced at the terrified engineer. The man was holding his breath, waiting for James to say something. The fool should know better than to wake him so soon after his return from a salvage. Strangely, James was ambivalent about almost killing the engineer. Not that he took pleasure in harming others, but if the accident had happened, would it matter? He wasn’t sure if he’d feel anything either way.
James sat up on his bench and shook his head. “What the abyss do you think you’re doing waking a chronman up that way?”
“I’m … I’m sorry,” the engineer said. “We left you alone in here for four hours. Your handler sent word to wake you and retrieve the marks from your job. Shipment to Earth goes out in a cycle. I need to bag it.” His eyes moved down to look at the netherstore band around James’s wrist.
James held out his left arm to the engineer.
“Uh, Chronman?” The engineer pointed at the yellow shielding around his body. “You’re still on.”
James looked down and then back at the hull of the ship. Finally, he powered down his exo and atmos bands, watching the fields waver before flickering off. He felt a rush of stale air and inhaled the heavy odor of oil and metal. The station’s filtration generators were on half power again. James flipped the netherstore container’s link to the engineer. “Have at it. Two items. Register to S-yi and C-san.”
When the transfer was completed, the engineer scurried out of the collie as fast as he could. Chronmen were the second-highest operatives in ChronoCom and also the most feared by the rucks—civilians—for good reason. It took a special sort of person to be a chronman, and it wasn’t the good kind of special.
A prerequisite to becoming a chronman was five years of grueling training at the ChronoCom Academy on Tethys. Officially known as time operatives, chronmen had to be intelligent, quick to adapt to changing situations, and be good actors. They also must have short memories of their past assignments.
Good chronmen also shared negative traits. They tended to be antisocial, short-tempered, excessively violent, and borderline suicidal. Needless to say, the life expectancy for people like James was short.
Still, in spite of all their psychological problems and eccentricities, chronmen were considered critical to maintaining the power supply for all of humanity, so nearly everything they did was tolerated. Some even argued that having eccentricities made good chronmen, rather than the job causing such behaviors.
James walked down the ramp of the collie and passed through the crowded docking hangar. Himalia Station was a launching point for mining operations to Jupiter as well as one of the only ChronoCom offices this far out in the solar system. Right now, mining operations were quiet while salvaging operations were in full swing.
James paused as a yellow collie—the
Ramhurst
—one of the newer ships, still sporting its paint job, came in hot on its landing and nearly took out half an engineering crew. Not having seen Palia in several months, he waited and watched as several engineers scrambled to the ship and pried the door open. A few seconds later, they floated Palia out on a gurney and sped off.
James grabbed Kia, Palia’s handler, as she ran by. “What happened to her?”
Kia shook free. “Curellan Mining uprising. She got caught during the retrieval. Barely got her back. Sorry, James; talk later.” She sped off.
James watched them all disappear down the corridor toward triage. He hoped she pulled through. Palia and Shizzu were the only surviving chronmen from his graduating class at the Academy, and James couldn’t stand Shizzu. The rest had either died on assignment or poked a giant in the eye, which was chronmen-speak for steering your collie toward a gas giant and letting go of the controls. Palia dying would make for an awkward reunion between him and Shizzu.
Another group of engineers rushed by, this time toward a collie he didn’t recognize. James got out of their way and headed out of the dock. He was supposed to report to Smitt at Hops—Handler Operations—but instead, he headed to the lower levels and toward the Tilted Orbit.
Himalia Station wasn’t as large as other bases. Though the largest moon after the four satellite colonies around Jupiter, Himalia was only 170 kilometers in diameter. Still, it had a population of a quarter million, mostly gas miners, military, and ChronoCom personnel, which skewed the gender demographics slightly toward men. More like six to one. The pleasure boys and girls were so scarce and sought-after that they were almost as well respected as chronmen. Even then, most of them were transient. They’d arrive, get rich in weeks from nonstop work, then bail out as fast as they could.
The halls of the station were three sides’ metal and the ceiling a layer of natural rock. The moon’s elliptical orbit subjected the surface to extreme temperatures, necessitating that the majority of the base be kept underground. This made all the corridors incredibly cramped and dusty, as showers of pebbles and debris continually rained down on the station’s inhabitants.
The light flickered, as it tended to do when the power was kept to a third, which these days had become the new norm. James, walking in a hallway barely wide enough for three people abreast, moved with the downward flow into the residential section. Though cramped and claustrophobic, Himalia Station was one of James’s favorite bases of operations. Most inhabitants were too transient to bother knowing, and the few permanent residents knew to leave one other alone.
James reached the Tilted Orbit and sat down at the bar. Several of the grease-faced miners sitting on both sides of him got up to give him space. It wasn’t that people hated him; they just knew better than to get in his way. No one messed with a chronman. And if one messed with you, you just took it. James didn’t abuse his position of power often, but he knew some who did. Since chronmen were all that stood between society functioning and completely falling apart, it was a capital offense to injure one of his kind.
By last count, there were fewer than twenty chronmen on Himalia Station and maybe a hundred on Earth, with possibly three thousand across the rest of the solar system. Three thousand minus one if Palia didn’t make it.
“Jobe,” James gestured. “Whiskey. Whatever crap no one else can afford, and a round to every soul here.”
The bartender nodded, brought over the bottle and a tin cup, and gave him a generous pour. “On your tab, James.” He walked away to provide each patron his free drink.
James barely looked up as a few of the other patrons toasted him with their tin cups. It was something he did every time he returned from a job. Some had mistaken the gesture for friendliness. Nothing could be further from the truth. The few who tried to thank him personally were met with a blank stare and a turn of his back.
For the next hour, James sat alone, ignoring the increasing number and the growing cacophony of the patrons as more miners and station workers streamed into the Tilted Orbit. He stared at the bottle of whiskey, the level of which decreased by the pour; it was down to half now. His thoughts wandered back to the whiskey Grace had ordered him to pour for her. Swails’s job was also that of poison tester, and the two whiskeys he had tried while in her service were divine. The past had some truly great whiskey, not this crap they had here at the edge of hell.
James looked around the packed bar. There were only two drinking holes on the station, so both were rarely empty. A few other chronmen had walked in, each staking their claim at different parts of the bar. Other than a slight tilt of the head, none of them acknowledged the others. Like James, they sat and drank alone.
Even with this many people in such a confined place, there was still no one around him. No one was willing to take the chance of standing too close to a chronman. James lifted the tin cup and took a sip. Well, almost no one.
“You’re supposed to report to Hops before you make your way here,” he heard Smitt say behind him. It was better than having his handler’s damn voice piped directly into his head.
“I broke a dumb rule; fire me.” James shrugged and signaled to Jobe to bring another cup. He poured the so-called whiskey to the brim and slid it over, sloshing a third of it on the counter.
“Easy there.” Smitt cupped the whiskey gingerly in his hand. “Just because you’re a rich god among men doesn’t mean the rest of us are. There’s a reason the miners are drinking swill and you’re drinking…”
“Swill,” James muttered, taking another sip. He turned to his only living friend in the solar system. “You want to know what I’ve tasted before? What I’ve seen? Remember that salvage during the twenty-first century with the formation of the Luxe Empire? There was this drink they were just handing out like water…”
Smitt lifted his drink. “It’s called champagne, James, and thanks for rubbing it in.”
“Not just that. It seems every time period before ours was better. We’re sucking on the dregs of civilization. Frankly, I’m tired of coming back.” He slammed his fist on the counter. The bar got quiet. Usually, fights breaking out between the patrons was no big thing, but when a chronman was involved, everyone paid attention. James looked around at the staring eyes, then shifted his gaze back down to his cup. He hated the attention; all chronmen did. They were trained to keep a low profile. “It’s like waking up to a nightmare every time I return,” he said, eyes focused back on the dark liquid at the bottom of his cup.
Smitt patted James on the back. He was probably the only human being James allowed to do that. “Past is dead. Script’s run its course. All you see when you go back is the illusion of choice.” He was used to James’s ramblings by now. It wasn’t like these were revelations that had just occurred to James while he was soul-searching over a cup of whiskey. This rant might as well have served as his debriefing every time he returned from a jump.
James looked up at the crowd, half of them still keeping one eye on him. He had gotten into scuffles with quite a few of them, before they had found out who he was. Once they had found out, though, they had just stood there and waited for him to beat on them. He never did. That took the fun out of brawling. That was why he never wore his ChronoCom insignia.
James slid his hands through his hair and lowered his head to just above the bar’s surface. “I don’t know what I’m doing. I need a change of scenery, to get out of this shit hole.”
“You just might,” said Smitt, reaching over and plucking the bottle out of James’s hand. He gave himself a generous pour. “As your handler, it’s my job to see to your needs. You have a new salvage. It’s an on-book luxury call with a big payout.”
James frowned. “What the fuck you talking about? I just got back. I have mandatory downtime. Not to mention I’m already two weeks late on my miasma regimen. Listen, the lag sickness—”
“Already got you waivered. You can catch up on your regimen after the job. Trust me, it’s worth it,” said Smitt. “Stoph was originally on book for this but he poked the giant two days ago. ChronoCom is low enough on experienced chronmen as it is to spare a Tier-1, so I volunteered us for this little gem. It’s a private request from some shiny wig on Europa, so you know they have fat scratch. Helps keep the lights on, yeah?”
James sighed. “Thousand in the Academy and they can’t maintain chronmen levels. What the black abyss are we doing?”
“You know ChronoCom can’t afford to screw up salvages these days, and the cut rate at the Academy is eighty percent. Death rate for chronmen is what, seventy-five percent before two years? We got maybe five hundred guys on hand that ChronoCom trusts for Tier-2 jobs and up, and you remember what happened with that idiot Jerrod swapping in the fresh fodder straight out of the Academy. Kid died and the entire salvage was ruined. Eight hundred units of transferable power for a battle cruiser lost forever because the handler assigned a near-ruck.”
“Did they at least jump him into the beginning of the scenario to give the time line another shot at a jump?” James asked.
Smitt shook his head. “Nope. Put the fodder smack in the middle of the salvage. That whole time line is too frayed and unstable now for another jump. But those’re the rules. Usually only one shot at a salvage. That’s why there’s only a hundred or so of you Tier-1s, and why you make the big scratch.” There was a beep and Smitt’s eyes glazed over for a moment. He frowned. “Make that ninety-nine. Palia didn’t make it.”
“Guess it really will be me and Shizzu at the reunions.” James raised his cup to his former classmate. Now they were down to two. He wondered which one of them would be the last man standing.
Smitt grinned. “Just you, actually. Shizzu joined the chain, raised to auditor while you were fucking Grace.”
“That fodder Shizzu is an auditor?” James grounded his teeth. He couldn’t think of anyone more unworthy of rising up the ranks to become a watcher of the chronmen. “You have to be kidding. What did that asshole do to deserve that?”
Smitt shrugged. “It surprised a lot of people, to be honest.”
“Black abyss.” He threw back the cup and slammed it down on the table. “Whole agency is going to hell.”
Smitt stood up and again patted him on the back. “Get some sleep. You’re heading to Earth at the second rotation with the next shipment.”
James made a face. “Earth?”
Smitt grinned. “You have to take one for the team once in a while. You said you wanted a change of scenery. You didn’t say how nice a one.”
There was something about the city of Luoyang in northeastern China that reminded Auditor Levin Javier-Oberon of Habitat-C3 Oberon, the colony of his birth. Maybe it was the thick soot in the air, the uneven gray brick streets and walls, or just the sound of the city constantly buzzing at all hours of the day; it was definitely the squalor. That was the thing about poverty: no matter what planet or time period, squalor was squalor.