Hedy caught me looking her over and smiled. “There is a bar on level three of beta spoke called the Blue Moon. I hear they serve a wonderful mojito with real mint leaves.”

  I shook my head. I had been done in by mojitos before joining the marines. My military nanites would neutralize the alcohol before I got drunk but I was not one to tempt fate.

  “I think I’ll stick with a beer myself.”

  “Not the adventurous type?” Hedy teased.

  “Not a man wishing to rehash bad memories,” I answered. “Give me a dark ale and a few peanuts and I’m a happy camper. Besides,” I added, “One of us needs to be able to walk the other back to the hotel.”

  “Spoilsport,” Hedy huffed.

  ***

  The Blue Moon was one short step above a dive. It was on the third level of the beta spoke which meant it was in one of the oldest sections of the city. The smell of methane and sulfur that permeated the older sections of the city were a constant reminder that Ceres was a hydrocarbon slush ball. No matter how hard the engineers that created the city tried… there was just no way to fully scrub the smell out of the air. The older sections had older designs in use in their air handling systems and suffered accordingly.

  The Blue Moon addressed this issue by adding their own unique, if somewhat unpleasant, range of odors to the mix. These odors included sweaty miners, various grilled meat substitutes and fermenting beer.

  In my mind, beer tasted great but the smell of it being brewed was, at best, an acquired taste… one which, I might add, I had yet to acquire.

  The music was loud and made conversations between large groups of people difficult. That said, private conversations between two or three people were actually enhanced because you could lean over a small round table to have your discussion secure in the knowledge that a person even a few feet away would never be able to hear you. This made the Blue Moon the perfect venue for wheeling and dealing.

  And so it was, we met a miner named Big Barney.

  Chapter 10: Big Barney …

  Bernard McKinnie, a.k.a. Big Barney, was as wide as he was tall. Note, Barney was not especially wide… he just wasn’t that tall. I suspect there might have been some genetic tampering going on in his gene pool. He was literally born to be a rock rat… a miner where his size and musculature could and would be a real advantage. This meant he was almost assuredly a second or third generation miner. That also meant he was a wealth of information about the comings and goings within the asteroid belt.

  He had a friend named Coyote who was as tall as he was short. They made an odd pair… one short and squat… the other tall and lanky. Both men had been drinking at the Blue Moon for a while. It seemed the lost GHD Skipjack had been hauling their ore.

  “I tell ya, Ytti is where it’s at,” Big Barney said for the umpteenth time while spilling what little was left of his fifth beer on my leg. Ytti was rock rat for Yttrium.

  The rotund but muscular man burped a quick apology before returning to his passionate, if somewhat limited, topic of the day.

  “Damn filchers are making it dern nar impossible to make an honest live’n,” Big Barney complained. “Needs hire protection just ta ship yer ore… taint right.”

  “Damn filchers would be the pirates that keep hitting your ore ships?” I asked. The man’s accent seemed to be getting deeper and harder to understand with every sip of beer he gulped.

  “Pirates my ass,” Coyote bellowed loudly before realizing he was being too loud. He continued in a more conspiratorial voice, “Dimes to dollars its dim dam Donalites dats doing the pilfering. Aint no way a pirate is that well organized! The grabs are too clean and what comes back on the market doesn’t feel right.”

  “Sounds like you two have some experience with them,” Hedy said from the far side of the table. She had to lean forward to be heard… a motion which, given the cut of her shipsuit, caused the miners eyes to wander.

  “Aye, that I do,” Coyote answered, “least with normal pirates. When ya need a part fer equipment or ship and ya don’t mind where it be com’n from… if ya catch my drift… pirates can be a good second source when the company store taint got what ya need. Thing is… pirates operate casual-like. Every man is in it fer himself. Every pirate gets their cut and can sell their cut as they sees fit. There are chop-shops setup for noth’n but pirate wares.

  “If spare parts or equipment come available now-a-days… it’s almost as if the sellers are trying to hide the fact that they are sell’n.”

  “Almost as if the thieves are stealing from their bosses and selling on the side,” I said.

  “Exactly!” Big Barney agreed as he slammed down his beer and managed to drench those of us seated about the table in the process.

  The little man tried to sop up the spilled beer… especially on Hedy’s lap. She smiled but firmly moved his hand back up to the table. He shrugged but kept talking.

  “The sad fact is… dim buggers are bleeding us dry. I’ve lost two loads myself of high grade ore before I partnered with this guy,” He nodded to Coyote. “The last time they shot up one of my tugs as well as taking my cargo train.”

  “What you need is an armed escort service,” I interjected. We needed to book a gig that put us in proximity to a likely Donalite target. Big Barney’s operation seemed as good a bet as any. I looked at Hedy and she gave me the barest of nods.

  “I hate to pay for an escort but I hate losing loads too,” Barney grumbled. “What are you flying and how well armed is she?”

  Now it was my turn to smile. “Kara’s not a big ship but she has teeth where it counts. She used to be a combat shuttle that we’ve fixed up and added some special enhancements to.”

  Barney’s eyes glinted for a brief moment and I wondered if the drunken stupor was an act. Before I could decide one way or another the inebriated miner was back.

  “Yer josh’n me yer are. Combat shuttles get buried in a military boneyard. Ya can’t get yer hands on em… trust me I tried more than once.”

  “That’s true my friend. Ours most certainly would have found its way into a military boneyard had it been recovered after the war… As it was… well… let’s just say… finders-keepers.”

  “Ya found a wrecked combat shuttle from the war with the D’rlalu? That’s brilliant… also illegal to keep.”

  Hedy winked. “We won’t tell if you won’t,” She said. “Besides that regulation only applies to jump-capable ships. We have VASIMR thrusters only and our weapons are modified commercial rails.”

  Barney leaned forward. He must have had some type of alcohol scrubbing nano-tech in his system because he was suddenly all business.

  “Modified how?”

  I shrugged. I wasn’t quite willing to lay too many cards on the table yet and the man’s ability to go from stone-cold drunk to completely sober in two heart-beats had me a little on edge.

  “I don’t want to get into too many details in a room like this but suffice it to say we have military grade sensors and targeting with top-tier kinetics. We won’t be taking on a Yorktown class ship but I’m guessing any pirate ship we ran into would know they tangled with us.”

  “Five percent after costs,” the smaller man said.

  “Ten percent off the top,” I replied.

  “Let me deduct my fuel costs and ya have a deal for one run. If I like the way it works out then we can talk about a longer-term arrangement.”

  I shook the now completely sober man’s hand. We had a gig.

  ***

  Ensign Franklin Hamilton O’Ryan McGinnis, a.k.a. Duffy, was not a happy camper. We had been on station above Ceres for barely four hours and now we were leaving orbit. As Duffy had the first and only watch, he had not had a chance to leave the ship. I was at a loss as to the source of his disappointment. Hedy and I, having spent the bulk of our time in one of the smeller sections of Ceres, felt we had nothing to lose in the foul odor department… and so we magnanimously brought back to our compatriot a six-pack of the local microbrew.

  Duffy accepted the offering but he made it clear that the next time we made port he was going to want a chance to stretch his legs. Neither of us knew it at the time, but that desire was going to come back to bite us hard.

  It turned out Coyote was not part of Big Barney’s normal operation and so they parted company at the bar. Barney’s rock skipper, the Red Barn, was a small two man craft that had seen better days about two decades ago. It was a collection of hull patches and spot-welded thrusters. Right now the small ship was on a hard burn that would accelerate it into a wider orbit around the sun but still well within the main asteroid belt.

  Duffy, per my instructions, matched the Red Barn’s course and acceleration as we paced the miner in route to his ‘ytti’ claim. The claim itself was a three kilometer chunk of rock about the shape of a potato floating in an orbit that put it currently about three and a half days from Ceres. That distance would eventually shorten to about two days as their relative orbital positions lined up. After that the distance would continue to grow until they were on opposite sides of the sun… in about eight years.

  According to Barney, he had a cargo train loaded with ore under a camo net on the rock’s surface. All we needed to do was pull up to the asteroid while he attached a hauling tether to his sole remaining tug and we could be back on our way to Ceres. It seemed easy enough but the hairs on the back of my neck kept twitching. There was something wrong with the way Big Barney had perked up in the Blue Moon when we mentioned that the Kara was a former combat shuttle.

  I discussed the matter with Hedy and Duffy at great length but they both agreed that I was probably being paranoid. Paranoid or not, I was going to watch the rock rat like a hawk. I had long ago learned to trust my instincts and they told me in the words of Shakespeare’s Marcellus to Horatio ‘Something was rotten in the state of Denmark.’

  Shortly before the mid-trip turnaround that would mark the beginning of our deceleration phase Hedy received a radio hail from Barney’s rock skipper.

  “Kara darling, I’m getting a might bit lonely out here. Any chance you’re planning a midway?”

  Midways were a rock rat tradition, especially for longer trips that involved a celebratory meal and usually a not insignificant amount of alcohol consumption.

  Hedy looked at me. Before I could answer, Duffy yelled from the lower deck “Party Time!”

  ***

  Moving people between ships traveling in space is surprisingly easy. All one had to do was match relative velocities and vectors… open the airlocks and jump across. Marines had extensive training in such maneuvers… rock rats on the other hand probably had the skill well-in-hand before they were weaned from their mothers.

  Big Barney’s EVA suit was equipped with the standard cold thrusters required of all such suits but as I watched him launch himself over from the Red Barn I knew he probably never used them. His landing at our airlock egress was about as perfect as could be accomplished.

  Given that the galley on a ship like the Kara was not an elaborate affair, most meals took the form of prepackaged heat-n-serve ready-packs. That said, it was possible with a little creativity to work some magic if you had the requisite skills. Now, understand, I’m the type of guy that can burn water. My cooking talents begin and end with peanut butter and jelly on two slices of plain white bread. Fortunately I had learned that the best leaders utilized the strengths of those they led. Both Hedy and Duffy were surprisingly good cooks.

  Hedy had worked with Duffy to secure and defrost an entire turkey dinner complete with all the trimmings including spuds, gravy, stuffing and those little green beans with mushroom sauce. For desert we had something I had never had before called pumpkin pie. It looked revolting and I suspect the pie was an acquired taste. Hedy made me promise to try a piece. I reluctantly agreed. Later in the evening I did indeed have a bite of the proffered piece Hedy pushed my direction. I was in command after all and a captain often is called upon to make sacrifices for his crew. Much to my amazement, I found I liked it.

  Barney, as the invited guest, brought the booze. In this case it was a couple six-packs of Cere’s finest microbrew and a bottle of peach liqueur. I tried to hide the bottle from Duffy but fate intervened and he spotted it before I could get it out of view.

  “I knew I liked this guy,” my co-pilot beamed. “Who’s up for a glass?”

  I knew at that moment we were in for some serious trouble.

  Hedy set out four shot glasses and Barney proceeded to pour the thick liquid into each glass. I waved off my glass but both Hedy and Barney would have none of it.

  “Boy, when I was grow’n up… not that I got very far… Me pap pap taught that a man never turned down a friend’s toast. See’n as I’m hope’n for a long and prosperous friendship I’d take it as a personal kindness if’n ya be joining us fer that toast.”

  Seeing I was not going to get away with sticking to my preferred beer, I smiled and grabbed my shot glass. We clinked the glasses together in the Kara’s small galley and let the rock rat have his toast.

  “When we drink, we get drunk. When we get drunk, we fall asleep. When we fall asleep, we commit no sin. When we commit no sin, we go to heaven. So, let's all get drunk, and go to heaven!”

  “Here here!” Duffy bellowed. “I don’t imagine too many of the McGinnis clan make it to heaven so I’m game to do my part.” With that he downed his glass in a single professionally executed gulp.

  I downed my glass, if not quite so professionally, at least adequately enough to avoid choking on the ultra-high-test brew. In fairness, it had a pleasant sweetness that would be easy enough to lure a hapless victim into drinking to excess. I knew about such things from personal experience. I triggered my nanites to begin filtering my blood stream. As a normal part of the process my embedded AI received a molecular breakdown report. Normally for alcohol-based products this would include a number of organic compounds including flavonoids and various hydrocarbon based sugars and hydroxyl groups. What I wasn’t expecting was a relatively high amount of titanium. Titanium was a telltale sign of nanite infestation. The only nanites my marine-grade systems would intercept were nanites of foreign origin.

  I send a code grey message with my AI’s analysis to both Hedy and Duffy. A code grey message always arrives via a marine’s internal AI node and, by its very nature, warns them not to give any indication they have received the message. Code grey exercises were something we ran a lot so the exchange occurred without any outward sign.

  I tasked my AI to isolate some of the foreign nanites and determine their function. It wasn’t long before I had my answer. The nanites were crude machines of human design rather than the more advanced Heshe that the GCP typically used. They were designed to encapsulate a small amount of a non-lethal neurotoxin and release it on a remote command. Barney had dosed us all with knockout mickeys that he could use to incapacitate us at the time and place of his choosing.

  The rock rat took that moment to raise a glass my direction and smile broadly… after all… we were all friends here. The smile I returned was equally infectious.

  Chapter 11: Door to the Donalites…

  “So tell me lad, what brings a lot like you three out to the ass end of the solar system?” Barney asked as he consumed a third piece of Hedy’s pumpkin pie.

  “It’s a long and bitter story… are you sure you want to hear it?”

  “Does it have a happy ending?” The little man mumbled as he licked the whipped cream off his fork.

  “We’re here… so I suppose it does,” I ventured. I looked at Hedy and Duffy.

  “We told you before Captain,” Duffy said. “Where you lead we will follow.” I had signaled the others to take my lead with the rock rat. This was Duffy’s subtle way of letting me know that he had gotten the message. I looked back at Big Barney and began to spin a yarn that we had carefully rehearsed for just such an eventuality. It was a fifty-fifty mix of fact and fiction.

  I sighed dramatically. “I suppose you would find out eventually… so we might as well be upfront about it.”

  Barney paused briefly to eye the last piece of pie. Hedy pushed it towards him and he eagerly exchanged his empty plate for the pie tin. I seriously wondered if the man had installed a hyperfield jump conduit in his stomach. He was a third my size but ate twice as much.

  “My full name is AG Stone. Hedy, Duffy and myself… we are… well…”

  “Marine rejects,” Duffy added with a prideful glint in his eye.

  I shook my head. “I wouldn’t have said it that way… but it is, I suppose, an accurate assessment of our situation. Duffy and I finished our officer training course and Hedy is… was… a Chief Warrant Officer with a specialty in engineering.”

  “That explains why yer little ship is in such fine state but not why yer dragging about out here with us rock rats.”

  “Are you sure you really want to hear this?” I prompted.

  “Ain’t got nut’n but time out here son.”

  “During my final OJT I failed a psych review.”

  This statement generated a raised eyebrow. “Seriously… ya seem a pretty stable fella to me. What got ya running scared?”

  “You misunderstand… fear was not my problem. I was diagnosed with unresolvable bigotry. I was placed in a situation where I was forced to work with the D’lralu… or D’rlalu or whatever they are calling themselves today. Who the hell ever knows why they keep changing the way they pronounce their race… has to do with when their females come into heat or something.”

  “And you have a problem working with the doggies?” Big Barney prompted with an amused glint in his eye. He used a derogatory slang for the six-legged aliens.

  “You could say that,” I spat. “The damned doggies killed my world… killed my parents… and killed my sister. So yeah, you could say I have some unresolved anger issues. The Donalites have the right idea. The only good aliens we’ve ever encountered are the Heshe because they at least had the good sense to pick up and leave for good.”

 

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