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Mandragala's commercial shipping ring echoed with the slam and bang of giant machines moving cargo from ship to station to vendor, or to ship again. Most of the Human traffic kept to the warmer central area of the ring, safely away from massive machinery and mountains of shipping containers, where thieves, pickpockets, and worse might lurk. The lowlifes hanging out there still found prey in drunken spacers and new meat—the confused and bedazzled newcomers to space that had not yet learned the wariness necessary for survival. At least once every few weeks one of them never got a second chance to learn.
Like I said; you adapt fast...
I stood on the outer border of the main promenade, shivering in the icy, dead air while I searched the pile of rundown prefab buildings stacked high along the wall of the station's central core. The pile, iced with its overlay of lights and adverts, had grown since our last trip in. I could have watched the colors and movement of the ads for hours—my own cheap form of entertainment—but I was on a mission to save our livelihood and they were making it difficult for me to find what I was looking for. I cut back the commercial overlays in my perivision to 'cargo-related only' and studied the quieter business signage that remained after the dancing, blazing carnival of lights faded. High on the pile wall, bilious, blazing green, meter-tall letters declaring "Seven Star Cartage" sizzled over the duller shingles of lawyers, insurers, and expediters.
Scriver once told me spacers were drawn to the color green. He speculated it was some deep, anthropological thing, based on our planetary origins; like an association of safety with the trees we had descended from. I thought it might be because it shared the color with our vacuum food packs.
Whatever.
I worked my way through the press of bodies toward that area of the stack.
Though the crowd was not dense, I occasionally felt the bump of another body. Most of them were accidental: people caught up in conversation or lost in thought. But every once in a while the bump was harder. More purposeful. Like a stationer spotting a bald head and forgetting there wasn't room up here for factories to make their necessities, or fields to grow their food. Forgetting they needed someone to bring in the stuff that kept them alive.
Yeah, assholes. You're welcome.
My resentment faded by the time I climbed the five levels of narrow metal stairs to my destination. Mandragala's gravity had me fervently vowing to work out the next time Saura suggested it. Right now, however, I had to get to the business of saving said exercise equipment.
"Zant, good to see you." The smile on Jakub Scriver's craggy, slightly less than handsome face looked a bit tight around the edges as he beckoned me inside his two-meter square cube of office. "Come in. Sit.
"You look like hell," he added. It was a little, not-funny joke we shared.
"Still adjusting to station environment," I told him as I looked around.
The place was the same old box. Though it was small, I knew, coupled with the blazing green sign, it ranked high on the station's rental scale. Lucky for him, with records stored and accessible on-demand through brain implants and three-dimension personal screens, he had no need for a larger space.
"How's Saurubi?"
The question caught me off guard. Not the mention of my partner's name—he had given us our first job after we bought the Thief's Hand and we considered him a friend. It was just that social chatter during work hours in his little, expensive cube was not his style.
A delaying tactic for bad news? My heart rate increased as I slid into one of the two chairs he squeezed in for customers. I decided to play the social game for a little while, though it wasn't my strong point. We needed him as close to one hundred percent on our side as we could get him. "I left her covering every available surface on the Hand with Go boards."
"You don't worry all that activity will start the EA asking questions?"
Yeah, I did, but in the years since our discharge, the Tabi Empire must have filed some kind of inquiry with the EA regarding the whereabouts of their expensive little Astrogator and nothing had happened yet.
I shrugged. "The EA knows where she rests her furry ears every night." They sure as hell didn't exhibit any offended sensibilities when they handed us an assignment on the Outer Rim. All we could figure was the personnel exchange with the Tabi Empire must have moved to another level.
A lone picture frame on his desk caught my attention. It displayed a smiling woman holding a little boy. My heart gave a twist. "New?" I gestured toward it.
"Oh." Scriver tried to look casual, like he'd forgotten it was there. "Actually, we formed an official union a few years ago."
In that few seconds pause, I had searched out the station's social announcements: the kid was born right after we left Mandragala last trip. The woman was pretty. She had hair. The kid in her lap partially blocked view of her body, but she probably had tits, which was more than I could claim.
Scriver and I had had a brief brush before our second contract. But the years lived in a grav well for him, as opposed to months spent in fold for me, hadn't played well for partners in a relationship. It was an unhappy detail—or questionable benefit—of life as a spacer.
I asked him about the kid. I like kids, though I have no plans for any of my own. I have my reasons.
The boy was three years old. Scriver showed me another picture. I smiled and told him the kid was damned cute. He was.
Deep down, I fought off a terrible pang of sadness. Three was such an innocent age.
"So, what's the situation down on Dock D?" he asked as he shut down his personal vid feed.
Finally, we were getting to the meat. "They made me blow into a rubber tube, pronounced me 'clean', and left the external cargo doors covered with red tape." I leaned forward, elbows on my knees. "When did they notify you of the quarantine?"
"A few hours before you made Black Rock."
I stared at him. "You were expecting a coffin ship to hit the outer system!"
He grimaced. "Let's just say I was pleasantly surprised when they told me your face showed up on Black Rock's monitors."
Nice he threw the word 'pleasantly' in there. "What have you done since then?"
"What do you think, Zant?" His voice took on an edge of anger. "I have to keep Seven Star afloat. I was looped in when you talked to Stationmaster Hu. I've run through all my contacts since then." The hard veneer of his business armor cracked. "I've tried, Vivi. Station management won't budge on the length of quarantine."
Shit. "Okay. But we still have to collect on our contract."
"Yeah, that's a problem." Light glinted off the fashionably oiled waves of his thick, dark hair as he ran a hand through it. "You know the contract says payment on delivery."
I felt a creeping chill of foreboding. "The cargo is sitting in Dock D, ready for you to take possession."
"In forty-two days! I can't pay you until I take actual possession."
"Jakub! We have to collect at least a partial payment now!"
He shook his head.
"This quarantine is trumped up and you know it!"
"I do. And I would help you if I could. But we have a bigger issue mucking things up, Vivi. A few weeks back a rumor about a scheduled meeting between the EA and the Whooex Union Trade Consortium hit the boards."
Well, shit.
***
WHEN HUMANS FINALLY met aliens, we didn't encounter just one species. We met a whole Union of fourteen Star Associations. And it wasn't our dazzling charm that drew them to us: it was our mode of space travel.
In the mid-twenty-first century, we found a crashed alien ship on one of Saturn's moons and the real Human push into space began. Within twenty years, we went from sublight speed to a subspace drive that shortened lightyears to years for adventurers willing risk cryo sleep to venture out into the Vasty.
The day after we established our hundredth colonial outpost the Whooex Union of Stars came calling. They did not come bearing an invitation to join in hand, or claw, however; they came with an ultimatum for us to cease the use of our subspace drive. It seemed our method of travel cut across an alternate dimension, threatening the life there. One of the diplomats explained that they, too, had used that method of travel in the early stages of their expansion into space—until the threatened dimension declared war upon them. After a few years of devastating war, they had developed a new method of space travel.
That was fine with us: we were willing to accept a few years slowdown in our colonial expansion in exchange for a better mode of travel.
That was not what the Whooex Union had in mind. Apparently, they simply wanted us to stop using our method of space travel. Otherwise, they explained, our inter-dimensional neighbors would declare inter-dimensional war on us.
No one had come to us threatening retaliation. We weren't the nervous species in the room. "Us, as in Humans?" we asked.
'No," they said. "Us. As in the whole Whooex Union."
Obviously, they had never dealt with Humans before. The now-famous mother of Human advancement into intergalactic space, Chloe Patel made a suggestion to the Whooex diplomats. "Share your system with us. Or," she said, "we must continue to use our destructive drive."
They threatened to destroy us. Our people—as fine a bunch of steady-handed negotiators as ever existed—said maybe so, but we could probably get in a few good licks on one of those other dimensions first. Then the diplomats could try to explain that to their angry, ancient foes.
In the end, they had no choice. It was admit us to the Whooex Union, with access to their drive, or go to war.
Of course, there were stipulations. The Earth Alliance was accepted as junior, secondary member with limited trade benefits. We could handle that, just as long as they gave us full access to the new, for us, drive technology.
It took several decades to master the tech. After that, we gained contact with the several species, including the Tabi Empire, whose spatial territories butted against our own. Frontiers formed and limited trade developed—small time stuff, but good enough for a fledgling alliance. But the crown jewel—admission to the Moneyworld, the Whooex Union Trade Consortium—remained beyond our reach.
Not everyone in the Whooex welcomed us, however. For reasons unknown, the Endar hated us from the moment we sat down to discuss the drive situation with the delegation. They made it abundantly clear they would prefer to send us back to the Stone Age. It seems, however, the Whooex Union has a rule in its charter stating any civilization comprising a hundred worlds or more is an established society and potential membership material.
Lucky Humans? Maybe. We now suspect we know who finessed that perfectly timed bit of legalese, though there's no way to confirm it.
Saurubi once told me the EA should not be too hasty in congratulating itself on its connections, real or imagined. She said some of them could prove more trouble than they were worth. When I asked her to explain, she refused to elaborate.
***
"JAKUB," I SAID. "WHAT has gaining admission to the Whooex Trade Consortium got to do with you advancing us payment for our cargo?"
"Are you from the next galactic arm, Zant? It means we're up for full membership to the Whooex Union! It means an embassy and access to all the markets on the Moneyworld. It means vast commercial potential!"
I didn't know whether to laugh or curse. "The EA has been through this process twice in the last one hundred and sixty years! Everyone gets their hopes pumped up and the Endarans block us before it comes to vote."
"Vivi! Right now we're collecting paltry crumbs of trade from the few allies willing to do business on the Outer Rim. The Moneyworld is the chance to contact with thousands of worlds! Think of the markets this would open!" He leaned forward, his expression rapt with anticipation. "One hundred and sixty years as a junior member. A hundred and sixty years! They can't keep rejecting us forever. Our charm has got to win them over eventually."
Yeah. I didn't think the Endarans were succumbing to our charm or anything else Human. Saura said they vehemently hated us. She couldn't tell me why, but said their dislike was one of the chief reasons the Tabi Empire chose to ally with us.
"How long is this..." I wanted to say fiasco, but decided it would not be helpful, "vote going to take?"
That sobered him a bit. "Within half a Sol year."
"Can businesses on this station survive a half year of this?" I waved a hand, unable to put a word to the situation. I knew that Saura and I couldn't.
"You can imagine the reaction it's stirred," he said, his expression pleading for me to understand the effect the news had excited on the station—hell, was probably having on every market in the Earth Alliance. "Capital's in short supply on the station right now. It's not just me, Vivi. For the past few weeks, everyone's been sitting tight, waiting for... I don't know what." He sighed. "Anyway, loose funds have dried up all over Mandragala."
"Has the Whooex given the EA the coordinates for the Moneyworld yet?" To this point, they had kept the location of the Trade Consortium World a secret from us. If they had shared that information with our highest levels of bureaucrats, the rumor would be out there, no matter what its level of confidentiality. Then even I would have to concede there was some legitimate basis for this mess.
"They say it's coming." His expression belied his confident tone.
Great. A rumor had preempted our lives. "I don't care about the Moneyworld. I care about keeping my ship. In the next ten hours I have to make at least a partial payment to Big H for the Hand."
"I wish I could help you, Vivi, I sincerely do! But if I can't move your cargo, I can't pay you."
I knew Scriver well enough to recognize when he was not going to budge on his position. Getting payment from him before the cargo shifted out of our hold was a dead issue.
But he was also at risk here.
"You know something's not right, Jakub," I said. "If they thought we presented a real threat to this station they wouldn't let us come near it. Why are we sitting in Dock D for forty-two days if they don't believe we're a danger to the station?"
"Because the contagion kills in forty-eight hours. Obviously, you're not infected, but that's not necessarily true for the cargo—"
"It's sol-smelted metal! Everything is done off world. Besides, if the station believes our cargo's a threat, why don't they order us to scuttle it and simply decontaminate the hold?" Not really "simply", but simpler than quarantine.
"Dammit, Vivi!" He hissed as he glanced at the upper right corner of the room, where a station security "eye" monitored all his business transactions. "Don't make the situation worse than it is!"
Make it worse for whom? Delay in delivering the cargo to his customer equaled penalties in his own contract.
Which was exactly the solution I was grasping for. "Look, this has you in a bind, too."
Still irritated with my previous suggestion, he gave a curt nod of agreement.
I continued. "You hold the forwarding contract on our cargo, right? So, let us run out the quarantine by carrying it on the next leg of the haul instead of sitting here, burning through time and money. Advance us enough credit for supplies and let us have the contract. The quarantine will expire before we reach your end user and it saves you six weeks of penalties. You can pay us for both legs when we deliver it, less the supplies. Neither of us loses." And it legally put us beyond the reach of the repossession process until we had Big H's money. "File the contract and we'll be out of here in hours. You have to pay somebody to haul it, now or later."
"I can't do that, Vivi." His hand flattened on the desktop with a smack. "Hann Brothers holds that transport contract. They delayed their departure time, waiting for it to arrive."
"Why didn't they just pull out when the quarantine came down?"
He gave me a sour smile. "Station management didn't want negative feed on the waves, so they didn't tell the ship captains until after they locked you down. No one is aware of the quarantine except you, your partner, me, station management, a few security, and the 'need to knows' representing Hann Brothers. Now Hann is pissed. They're demanding compensation for the delay from anywhere they think they can get it, including the Hand and Seven Star."
"They can't do that!" I stared at him in horror.
"No, they can't. The courts set precedence on that: quarantine is beyond a shipowner or contract's control. But, I'd still have to break the contract with them to switch it over to you. What do you think they'd do to me if I let you slice out their job on top of everything else?"
The Hann Brothers was a huge shipping conglomeration with strong Earth Alliance Space Transport Workers Union, or EASTWU, ties and influence in all the right places. They could, and would, ruin Seven Star Cartage and the Thief's Hand.
"Which ship is it?"
"The Jillie D."
I groaned.
"What?"
"The crew of the Jillie D and I have history. I was the officer in charge of a Marine detail that hailed them down in deepspace and boarded them looking for contraband. We confiscated somebody's stash of hazeadorn."
"What's hazeadorn?" Scriver frowned.
"A powerful, banned substance deep-sea poachers use to immobilize sea life for quick net catches. A few grams dumped in an ocean can cause a huge amount of destruction. Poachers drop it, move in, grab everything that surfaces, then leave while the stuff continues to spread, suffocating water life and causing massive marine kills. We never discovered the identity of the smuggler, but the kind of money hazeadorn brings would have spread around to several people."
"Ship crews are too damn tight to let a thing like that pass," he observed.
Ship crew had to be tight. Those bonds with your crewmates might be the only thing that kept you alive if disaster struck out in the Vasty. Unfortunately, sometimes those bonds transferred to an ugly, arrogant attitude toward anyone outside their circle. Someone on the Jillie D had a grudge against me. It meant a significant number of the crew were out to beat the hell out of me—or worse—in revenge for a fellow crewmember's loss.
It was a message they wanted to send to all the indies: Don't mess with an EASTWU crew.
"Hann won't wait six weeks for this load."
"Of course not. Crew has recall at zero hour, tonight. Hann has demanded compensation for the load shortage and the delay. The station is giving them free dock time back to your original put in."
No doubt, Mandragala would figure out a way to recoup that loss from Seven Star and the Thief's Hand.
Things were looking desperate for us. "Let us take the next leg of the haul," I urged again. "We can save you the late penalties!"
"Can't do, Zant. It's the principle of the thing with them. You know that."
The principle being the opportunity to eliminate another small contractor from the competition.
"If they agreed, would you do it?"
He shook his head. "I can't ask. I can't jeopardize my connections with the Hann Brothers. I need them. But I have—"
"What about us, Jakub?" I interrupted. "I'm asking you to throw us a lifeline here." I broke off to draw a deep breath, knowing station security was closely monitoring our exchange, including our vitals.
With good reason. After several successful litigations for negligence or failure to provide reasonable protection from unstable individuals, star station owners lived in a state of constant terror. Lawsuits had forced a complete handover of one massive facility and a change in ownership dynamics on another. People with things to lose recorded everything for legal protection against people without anything left to lose.
Saura and I were rapidly falling into the last category. "Jakub, I can't go to Big H empty-handed. Give us something—"
"I can't, Vivi. I don't have it!" His expression looked strained. "Maybe you can get something short term...from one of the banks."
"For a spacer who's only collateral is already tied up? Not likely!"
His mouth tightened. "Look. There is something. I don't know anything about it, so I was reluctant to mention it..."
"What?" I snapped.
"Damn it Zant! I'm trying to tell you! Someone contacted me right after the Hand began station fall. They said they want to talk to you."
Was he sweating?
"Who?"
"I don't know. He left an address in Spacertown—"
"You know I don't do Spacertown!"
"I don't know what your problem with Spacertown is, Zant, and I don't care. All I have is the address he gave me."
Damn the reaction Spacertown evoked in me! I clenched my hands to my sides to hide their sudden shaking. "What does he want?"
"Didn't tell me." He was sweating!
"Well, tell him to meet me here."
"I don't have a way to contact him. Just an address. It's in your feed. You know you don't have a lot of time."
What the hell? Why was he suddenly acting like a spacer going through station customs with a kilo of space dust shoved up his ass?
Maybe because he thought it was some kind of illegal transaction. Like I didn't have enough trouble already.
"You're right. I don't have much time." I needed to keep this association, but I had to move on. Try to work a deal with Big H. "I'll be in touch." Scriver wasn't a bad man; he was only caught up in a bad situation, the same as we were. "Thank you for your time, ser." I nodded and left his office.
***
"CAPTAIN ZANT! I HEARD you were a plague ship." The chair creaked ponderously as Big H leaned back and regarded me through narrowed eyes.
"Not a plague ship." Mother Universe! I should have known word would have already reached him. "The quarantine is on the cargo."
"So, you got my money?" That was Harry Grantham: neither dainty in appearance or demeanor.
"Not yet."
"Payment's due in nine hours." He cocked his head, a humorless smile splitting his heavy lips and pushing up ridges of salt and pepper bristles on his heavy jowls.
"The quarantine's for six weeks."
"Hunh."
I got directly to the point. "Scriver can't advance payment on the cargo. I came over to work out terms with you."
"Vivi. Captain. You know I don't want your soup-can of a ship." He straightened in his chair and braced his elbows on the desk, his plump hands flat on the surface in front of him. "Hell, I'm perfectly happy to let somebody else deal with the logistics of the crew, ship, and space. But I do want my money when it's due." He smiled again. "Lady Business is a cold, hard bitch."
And Big H worshipped at the Bitch Goddess' feet.
She seemed pleased enough with him. Harry Gratham was the one Human in Earth Alliance space with a remote link to the Moneyworld.
Several years ago he had managed a tenuous link with a financial institution close to the massive coalition of worlds and their markets—sort of like knowing a guy who knows a guy. It was the nearest the EA had come to the sacred cash cow of the Moneyworld. It didn't make Harry any money, but he became a celebrity in the eyes of EA financial markets that were desperate to worm their way into the heart of Whooex commerce. Years later, we still hadn't made any inroads into those coveted markets and the shine on Harry Gratham had dulled; but influential people still considered him one of our best hopes to crack the shell around the Moneyworld.
He leaned back in his chair again and crossed his arms. "No. I can't help you, Captain. If word got out I went soft on you, I'd have every piker I held a note on coming in here with a sob story about their cargo."
"But this one is true. You know it!"
He stared at me impassively.
I didn't particularly like the man who held the note on our ship, but he ran a successful business based on reason and fair risk. "If I can pay the interest—"
"Payment's due in nine hours. No exceptions. Some exciting opportunities are opening up and I need all the capital I can get my hands on."
Damn the Moneyworld! "Even if you take the Hand, the cargo remains under quarantine. You can't take actual possession for six weeks!"
"Maybe," Big H nodded. "But tell me, how're you and catgirl"—as lien holder on the Hand he was also aware of Saurubi's presence in EA space—"gonna come up with the money to cover the loss of the cargo?"
I thought the top of my head would come off with the rush of my fury. "The cargo doesn't come with the ship! It belongs to Scriver! What are you trying to do, get us killed?" No investor could let a debt like that slide.
Big H chuckled. "Relax, Zant. Scriver won't kill you; not when he can pass the debt on to you. Catgirl will go back to the Tabi Empire, to face charges for not returning at the end of her service in the Marines, and you'll pay the debt. You know the law."
A black cloud of horror threatened to engulf me. Yeah, I knew the law. According to the EA, personal belongings and cargo must be removed from a repossessed ship within twenty-four hours, or it became default property of the new shipowner. I just hadn't thought about it before. Scriver probably hadn't, either.
Big H was right: I would have to assume the loss and become indentured into service to Mandragala Station. I'd become a scrub, rented out as crew to whatever ship would bid for my service to pay off an impossible debt.
I felt as if he had kicked me in the gut.
"Believe me, Zant, I don't want your damned ship; it's not ready cash. But, if it's the only way to get my money, I'll take it." The chair creaked again as he clasped his hands.
For the first time I noticed that the heavy rings, intimidatingly crusted with blazing jewels, that usually decorated his fingers were gone.
Liquidated for capital?
Images of ragged refugees, huddling together on the outer dock for warmth, flitted through my mind. I saw my face among them.
"Figure out a way to get my money, Vivi."
No matter what it cost us, I had to do that. We could not lose the Hand.
***
FIVE HOURS AND EIGHT small lenders later, I was frantic. After hitting the legit sources, my last three stops had been to the most reputable loan sharks. All to the same response: no one had money to loan, regardless of the interest rate I offered to pay. With the deadline to pay Big H four hours away and the station's twenty-four-hour clock moving toward night cycle, I wasn't any closer to solving our problem.
My next stop would have to be the lenders in Spacertown. With the sum we needed, we'd never get out from under that.
Scriver had to help us.
"What is it now, Zant?" The man who stared out at me from my personal comm screen looked wearier than when I'd sat in front of him six hours ago.
"Scriver, if I don't get paid for our run we lose the ship and Big H takes the cargo with it. Neither of us can recover from that. Give us the next leg of the carry. Please! We'll do it for half the rate." It was a bad deal, but it would buy us some time.
Harry would be pissed to the max. He would penalize us. He would make us renegotiate our rate. He would have his henchmen beat me to within an inch of my life. But a big pile of creds sitting in front of him—eventually—would have a magical way of smoothing over the rough spots in our business transactions.
Scriver shook his head. "I can't, Vivi. I gave you what I had."
Did I see that glint of sweat back on his forehead?
"Damn the union, Scriver! We're both going to lose!"
"It's not the union, Vivi." He leaned in toward the screen, his voice low and urgent. "It's—" He straightened back up. "I can't pay you: that's all I can say." He shook his head. "My advice, friend, is go to the address I gave you."
Friend? "Jakub! We—"
"Vivi! For once in your life, stop fighting a losing battle! Shut your whining and go to the address I gave you!" The image blanked, leaving me staring at the address hanging before me.