Asimov's Science Fiction: December 2013 (19 page)

My plan was already going wrong. Perhaps we should have waited until we hit the L–5 Customs Station. Doubt tasted of bile.

The maintenance shaft constricted whenever my imagination flexed. I'd stuffed the Haf 'tsk into the cavern in front of me, a melted array of circuits, and a distorted forest of memory crystals. Next to it sat a tin cup of plastique laced with plastic shavings.

"Handy, they told me to shut up." Tone conveyed the mayor's sweating face, his trembling hands. "They don't care if we die. I think—" Static roared over my headset. "Wait! We're tracking a second signal on radar. Mac says it's too slow to be a missile. Might be a shuttle."

"We're in biz, amigo."

The Breather sighed to a stop when I disconnected its brain—the Haf 'tsk. Fourteen hours of air remained for the 21,104 citizens on our ship. Weeks of rehearsal provided wings for my hands to replaced our original Haf' with the smelted one.

I'd carried the piece of junk around for years with the intention of scavenging a few parts some lazy day to sell on the black market. That was, until my larcenous brainstorm struck.

Slipping the good Haf ' into my shoulder bag, I contorted to retrieve an envelope from my tool belt. One gentle exhale coated the cavern with dust. Clambering above the niche, I torched the tin cup. It burnt with a sickening, sooty smoke that left me coughing like an escapee from a TB colony.

I gingerly raked the smoldering cup into the shaft where it fell eight meters, then scrambled down the rungs. The cup went into the recycler. The good Haf ' went into hiding. I couldn't stop grinning. This would work.

After Lieutenant Commander Sorensen summoned me, I threw up twice before the hangover released me. Brushing lint from my uniform, I knocked and entered. Sorensen's cabin was paneled with Martian pine worth more than an admiral earned in a decade. Its scent intoxicated me as I stood at attention, awaiting the axe with dignity.

The commander was one of the L–5 Sorensens, rich beyond the dreams of Midas. Sunken, bovine eyes glowered at me. His upswept nose twitched as he studied his manicured hands. I fancied him a banker relishing tomorrow's foreclosures.

"Marquez, there's a damned fool grainer out there radioing our position. The
#88
is supposed to be orbiting Saturn, not on the Martian cusp. Damned grainers."

I willed my hangover away.

"They claim their Haf ' is down. Take a shuttle over there. If it is absolutely necessary, replace the minimum required to get them out of our hair. Be careful. Damned grainers'll steal the gold from your teeth. Before you leave, file a complete inventory—every tool, every bolt, and every battery you take. If they steal anything, it comes out of your pay, Marquez."

I swallowed a pineapple knot clogging my throat.

"You can fly a shuttle, can't you?"

"Spacecraft don't fly, sir, computers do. I can ride a computer with the best of them."

"We're here to catch smugglers, not coddle trash. If it weren't for the Refugee Accord, I'd blow a few holes in their ship for threatening our mission."

Sorensen glanced at his image in one of the mirrors surrounding his desk. A smile said he loved what he saw.

"I can do it!" I couldn't believe I said it with such vehemence.

"Make certain the damned grainers cease transmitting until they're clear of us. If their signal wasn't so weak— If they've blown my mission— While you're there, fish. Some of those thieving scum are bound to be dirty."

"Why bother?" I asked. "Arrest would make us responsible for their well-being until they came to trial. Impounding a grainship for smuggling might be... uh, too much, sir."

Sorensen's Adam's apple bobbed. "I see your point. Consider the vessel seizure clause waived for those grainers. You may arrest individuals should you find them with contraband. If I could—"

"I'll keep my eyes open, sir. And I won't replace a fuse unless it's necessary."

"Marquez, your performance on this mission has been substandard. Screw this up, and you will be dismissed from the service. Do well, and I'll nominate you to take the Master Tech examination."

"I'll do my best, sir."

"You come from Anderson Polis, do you not? You've done well for a person from
that
background." His face pruned. "My favorite aunt is from Anderson, so I'm not as biased as some. Don't disappoint me. We have a saying..."

His pep speech went on and on, equal parts threat and promise. My mind went blank.

I barely made it to the primary airlock in time. Mayor Keenan, of course, had vanished.

The rest of our ship might be falling apart, but we maintained a cherry guest lobby. You could never tell who might be dropping in—like a dour brunette. Long, scarred fingers (tech fingers, we called them in school) held the straps of three bulging toolkits. Her mouth was wide, silver eyes wider still. The dangling lobes of her ears had been fashionably stretched and tattooed with flying parrots.

"Don't you people ever bathe?" she asked.

"Got a prob with our water shortage, Ensign?"

She tugged at her name badge. "That's Tech Seven. Ensigns do my laundry."

The woman moved with the strut of a fighting bird, pushing me away when I tried to take her bags. She set them on the deck, moving between them and me.

"There's no time to waste, yerpie." Whereupon, she marched into the ship proper.

I raced to catch her. "I agree. In a few hours, we'll be choking."

She bee-lined to where the primary dorsal corridor should have started. Stopping, a puzzled curl twisted her nominal lips. Indeed, if it weren't for the tattooed lines, I wouldn't have noticed she had lips. She stared at the maze of domiciles in disbelief.

The alien Dyb' had not designed their grain transports to house 21,104 refugees from a nuked-out Earth. Each converted grainship had been extensively modified by necessity's notorious whim.

"The smell nearly killed me when I first returned from school," I said.

"Liar. Nobody would return to this."

"You ain't here to believe, Meka. Yer here because of Section Thirty-one of the Refugee Accord. By law, you must help us." I squinted at her ID badge. "Lookit, Tech Seven Marquez, all we need is a Model Four Haf 'tsk, then you can cruise back to yer tidy ship to terrorize space to yer heart's content. I—"

"We're not pirates. We're a revenue cutter,
mister.
Those freeloading Martian smugglers are stealing millions from our treasury with their non-taxed goods."

She paused at an intersection. "Where are we going? What sector of your ship?"

"No sector, that's book stuff, we're reality. That's the prob with these conversions— most of our infrastructure got stuffed into add-on blisters. Water filtration is on the opposite side of the ship from our reservoir. Our Breather blister sits atop the holding tank for our toxic wastes."

I routed us through hold after residence hold, wading through the ship's dregs while they stared and bumped and farted, providing our guest with the sort of experience she expected aboard a grainship. A codger stole the gloves looped under her belt. Another one had her tool belts half off before I elbowed him in the face.

Her fused-spine posture revealed how my peers gnawed on her nerves. Good, she would speed through the repair and flee.

Marquez noticed a teen unzipping one of her kits. Spinning, the woman kicked him in the face without breaking stride.

I couldn't have asked for a better set-up.

Before I cycled my shuttle's airlock, I inserted nose filters and sprayed my throat with spectrum antibiotics. Back home, I watched and contributed to the annual grainer telethon; the vids highlighted their squalor, diseases, and hopelessness for hours—good copy for the charity industry.

I wanted to don the protection of the soft hood of my envirsuit, but that would have hampered my investigation. Arresting at least one grainer with contraband would impress Sorensen. The prospect of taking the tech master exam intoxicated me. Sorensen had the juice to make it happen. I had to do well.

Their airlock was surprisingly clean, although its air tasted stale. The outer hatch closed with a groan. This was going to be easy, I repeated as my mantra. The inner hatch creaked open.

The stench nearly dropped me. Those programs never hinted at the smell of caged animals.

The welcome wagon was a stick of a man wearing a patched military jumpsuit. His uneven hair spoke of someone who didn't care how he looked. Lush hair, regardless. His face was lopsided, one sick eye lower than the other. Eyebrows compensated for the effect with their thickness. He needed a shower, two showers.

"What's your name, Stinky?"

An open sore on his neck oozed.

"Call me Handy, Ensign. Short for ship's handyperson." He grinned and coughed. The antiseptic breath I drew reassured me.

"Are you papered or just a citizen fixit?"

"I earned my Ph.D. in xenotech at the University of Deimos as an O'Hara Scholar.

My accreditation file is 633-290075. You can check it with the trade commission."

He was a smooth liar. Doctor Grainer indeed. A xenotech at that. What kind of moron did he take me for? An accredited xenotech received stacks of corporate blank-check offers upon graduation, even from second-rate schools like UD.

He would be the one I would arrest for smuggling. Keeping him imprisoned inside the shuttle's airlock would reduce any chance of spreading his diseases.

We hiked through a chaotic zone. Laundry hung from lines. The elderly sat in groups near the restrooms chatting like magpies. Sloth and ignorance exuded from their every pore.

"Why did you return?" I asked.

"My people needed me," he replied, as we stopped for him to manually crank a hatch open.

We entered a chamber filled with a hodgepodge collection of suitcase-sized fusion units salvaged from tractors and people-sized models from shuttles. Wiring harnesses, junction boxes, and antennae dangled from the ceiling—a death sentence waiting to happen.

A dismantled console was strewn across a narrow chamber. It might have been a navigation station once upon a time.

The short man kept scratching himself. My imagination had a field day with that hint of parasites.

"When you spend most of yer life sardined inside a ship, you get attached. This is the only place I've been where people didn't piss on me for being born on a grain-ship." He waved me into another chamber. "What do you think of our #2 Grav?"

I leapt into the dubious safety of the workshop. "Where is its shroud? You can't operate a drive like that. Where's its Jensen? God Almighty, how insane are you?"

"The coolant system never functioned up to specs. I've dumped its op temp by 15 percent by losing the shroud and installing a ceiling fan. I moved both drives' field generators into the wall. Wired 'em in series and increased their strength by 21 percent."

My wrist monitor confirmed it was safe radiation-wise, so I nosed an open access plate. The Jensen generators beyond were ancient. How could it be safe? Coolant dripped from a pipe. Water? How primitive. Shining my light inside the drive, oxidized copper and dust twinkled. My monitor claimed no rad, but its fourth dial glowed pink. One could suffer EM poisoning by dallying here.

Withal, that was an intriguing configuration on the armature. A tech could replace its primaries in minutes, instead of spending hours removing the shroud.

The smirk on his face hinted that I couldn't understand what he'd done. After all, I hadn't called him on his first lie, so he assumed I was a moron. Time to correct that.

"A Kob'da Model VIII-C, plenty of muscle. We had them aboard the cruiser
Mikhail Ali
during my first flight. We installed a second refrigeration system to beat the overheating problem."

"We don't have deep pockets like you gov types."

"Unique." My eye returned to the monitor. "Is there any way you can take me straight to the Haf'?"

The grainer grinned.

My engine modifications enthralled the woman; as a naval, my cut corners scared the hell out of her. It was hilarious watching her triple check her detector.

Outside the tunnel leading into the breather complex, I donned my poncho. Tech held her breath while I explained how I had swapped my envirsuit for fifteen kilos of antibiotics for the ship. A thick poncho insulated me almost as well as my suit had.

Almost
was more than a word to a grainer—it was a lifestyle.

We slithered into the core. I went first, belting myself to a rung so I could hang upside down above her. Marquez removed the Haf ', hands moving through each of the eighteen steps recommended by the factory manual. After scrutinizing and photographing the dust and soot coating the control device, she scraped samples into an envelope.

While she cursed her way through the dismantling, I clambered further up and replaced a frayed wiring harness with one Alvara had restored in her physical therapy class. I missed Alvara. The wires reminded me of her smiling blue eyes. She'd been on her way to being a first-class tech before the accident stole those eyes. If Marquez lost her eyes, her gov would give her the choice of vat-grown replacements or machine eyes. Alvara only had the choice of being blind or dead.

My guest climbed down with the charred Haf '. Her one-handed style was a pure handy move. The woman knew her stuff. That frightened me.

She placed the unit on the workbench—not a meter from where the good Haf' was hidden—in order to dismantle it.

Years ago, we had fused the puppy in Professor Hunge's Repair 492 class. Hunge moonlighted as Chief Master Tech on Deimos' dock, bringing his work to class for us to do. (He charged the customer for professional repair work, entering the student repair rate into the dock's accounts, and pocketing the difference. Hunge also taught Capitalism 308.) The Haf ' had been scavenged from a freighter that had collided with Deimos Station. We had replaced the shorted crystals and circuits, threw some current through it, and turned a million dollar control unit into...