Summer's End, page 36
I took it from him and looked at it a moment, and thought about what I’d told my grandfather. Then I handed it back to him.
“Give that to my grandfather when you get back.”
“You sure? I hear it’s pretty wild out there.”
“Yeah, I’m sure.”
Closing the door, I turned and walked across the tarmac to the ship. The sun was setting and there was a large line of haulers with containers waiting to be loaded. I could see Jarvis was inspecting one of them. When he finished they closed and locked the doors and he put a seal on it, wrote down the numbers, and went to the next one as Emil looked at her chart and told the loaders where to put it in the hold.
He looked up and saw me, and waved me over.
“Hi, Jarvis, what’s up?”
“Where were you?”
“Family business,” I said with a shrug.
“Family business? I thought your family was all onboard the Iowa?”
“It’s complicated. Oh, just how scary is Mr. Smith?”
“Mister . . . who the hell are you talking about?”
“The guy who gave my grandfather a hundred million for this stuff.”
“Your grandfather?” he said, giving me a sidelong look of disbelief.
“Like I said, complicated.”
I watched as he considered that a moment, then shrugged. “He was a leading actor on the stage back before we all had to leave Venus. He can act about as scary as you’d want him to be. But truth is” —Jarvis grinned —“he’s harmless.”
I shook my head and chuckled. “Figures. So how goes the inspection?”
“Good. With any luck we’ll have it all loaded before midnight.”
“Guess I better start prepping the ship to lift,” I said with a smile, and went over and took the stairs up to the cargo deck. As soon as I slipped in through the hatch to the engineering deck, Kacey ran over and gave me a hug.
“What happened?”
“Just a sec. Nik!” I called into Engineering.
“What’s up, Dave?” he said, popping out from behind one of the Siz-gees. He must have been sitting at the main control panel.
“Start waking up the reactors. Take it slow, but I want them online by eleven.”
“I’m on it!” he said and disappeared.
I smiled at Kacey. “I had a very interesting meeting with my grandfather.”
“Isn’t he the one who had you beat up?” she asked, giving me a concerned look.
“Yeah, but like I’ve told you, I had it coming. Long and short of it, my bio-mom’s husband has apologized and promised to stop bothering me. My bio-mom apologized for abandoning me as a child, and I think she might actually mean it.” I shrugged. “I guess we’ll see.
“Oh, and my grandfather wants me to join the family business.”
“And what, stay here on Earth?” she said, making a sour face.
“No, from Ceres.”
“Really? Sounds like they must be desperate.”
I had to laugh when she said that.
“You know? I hadn’t looked at it like that. Then again, I get the impression he thinks I’m going somewhere and that I’m a solid investment. Hmm, where have I heard that line before?” I asked, rubbing my chin and looking thoughtful until Kacey poked me in the ribs.
“Oof!” I said and then laughed again.
“So what did you tell him?”
“That I’d think about it. So I’ll think about it. I don’t think there’s a due date on it. Now let’s go upstairs and I’ll give my parents the edited version, and maybe see if Emil left anything in the fridge for me to eat.”
* * *
I passed a much less detailed account of what had been going on to my parents, only telling them that Jefferson had been causing problems, my grandfather had found out, made him apologize, and put an end to it.
“Was that it?” Dad asked.
“Well, he did apologize to me for everything that happened and asked me to convey his apologies to you as well.” I grinned at Dad. “Honestly, I think he’s a little unhappy with his daughter for having dumped you. He doesn’t seem to like his new son-in-law very much.”
I watched as he shook his head. “Probably for the best. I wouldn’t have known how to act around those kinds of people and” —he looked up at Jenny and lit up with a smile —“I wouldn’t have met Jenny. Yeah, don’t get me wrong, Eileen was nice and she did give me you, but I wouldn’t get rid of Jenny for all the money in the world.”
It was fun to see Mom lean into him and pretty much melt after he said that. I also got the feeling he was right. Eileen didn’t strike me as the kind of person who could devote themselves to someone else, while Jenny had done just that, devoting her life to her family.
“So what happens next?” Dianne asked.
“What happens next is once they finish loading, we deliver our cargo and then head home.”
“How long will that be?”
“About a month.”
“That long? I thought these ships were fast?”
“Ten days to our delivery, a week to unload and reload, then about ten more to get home.” I shrugged. “Ask Chris or Paul or Kat to teach you about navigating and all that if you want to know the details.”
She nodded. “I think I will.”
“Anything else?” I asked, looking around.
“When would be a good time to let my manager know that I’m not coming back?” Dad asked.
“Probably when we get to Ceres,” I said with a smile. “After we pass the orbit of the Moon, sending messages gets pretty tough.”
“Anything else?”
Everyone shook their heads.
“Great! I’ll be down in Engineering, getting the ship ready to launch.”
Ben came down with me and watched as Nik and I got everything ready. He had a few questions about what really went on at my grandfather’s place, and was happy to hear that Eileen’s husband had been forced to swear off any more attempts on me.
TWENTY-FOUR
Holloman Spaceport
Sometime after ten o’clock I went outside to check on how the loading was progressing.
“How many containers do we have left?” I asked Jarvis as I walked up to him. He was putting a seal on another container.
“I’ve got about sixteen left of the special ones that I need to inspect. I think there’s about a hundred left to be stored. Emil would know.”
“Still think you’ll be done by midnight?”
Jarvis winced. “It takes about ten minutes to inspect and seal each of these.”
“So, by one, then?”
“As long as there aren’t any issues, yes, by one. Sorry, Dave.”
“Don’t worry about it. As long as we’re out of here by three, I don’t think anybody’s going to complain. I’ll let Chris know; maybe he can get our departure moved up.”
“What’s the rush? We’ll make the four a.m. deadline easy.”
“With the day I’ve been having, the sooner we’re gone, the better.”
“I thought people from rich families didn’t have bad days,” he joked.
“The black sheep do,” I said, looking around and pulling out my tablet to ping Emil. “And I think I’m one of the blackest sheep out there.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Jarvis replied, heading off to the next container in line.
I checked my tablet to make sure I was on the ship’s network, then pinged Emil for an estimate of how long it would take to load the remaining containers, and could she provide that estimate to Chris, so maybe we could get out of here ahead of schedule?
“Well, if it isn’t my old pal!”
I sighed and turned, lowering the tablet.
“Donde, what the hell are you doing here?” I asked, looking him over. He was dressed like one of the usual cargo handlers who moved the containers for loading. I noticed the other cargo handlers were all avoiding him, because he looked union and they weren’t.
“Well, I could say I was here to ask you why the hell Crow isn’t dead, but it seems I’ve got even bigger problems!” he growled in a soft voice, looking around to make sure no one was close enough to eavesdrop on us. “What happened there, anyway?”
“He knew I was coming and of course your ‘men’ abandoned me the second I stepped inside. Oh, and his men all had guns, and guess what? They really were men, not a bunch of juiced-up fourteen-year-olds. So, why are you here, or do I just kill you and hope no one notices?”
I was bluffing, of course; about the only weapon I had now was harsh language.
“Kauf believes that I had Merks killed, that Crow wasn’t the one who did it, and now he’s after me as well! Yeah, I could hold off Crow, if it was just him, but my guys all abandoned me the minute Kauf told them I was out.”
“Yup, sure sounds like you got problems, but that still doesn’t explain why you’re here and why we’re having this conversation.”
“I need to leave, man. Like off the planet, leave! And you, Goose, are going to make that happen!”
I frowned at him.
“And just why would I do that? You set me up to get killed, Donde! I don’t owe you shit.”
“Oh, then maybe I’ll just go over to the tower and inform them that you’re smuggling your brother off planet? Blu told me what you paid him to do. I’m not stupid, Goose!”
Actually, I thought he was pretty stupid to have gotten himself in this mess. But I didn’t tell him that.
“Oh? So what do you want me to do? Go tell the captain that I need to smuggle a gang-banger off planet? One with a price on his head and a record a mile long?” I looked at him like he was mental. The bit about Ben was worrying me, though. Then again, if he was on the run from that many people, how long before somebody from one of the gangs caught up with him?
The last thing I needed right now was to draw any attention to the ship with the cargo we were carrying, as well as with Ben being onboard.
“I have a better idea,” I said and put my hand in my pocket. “How about I just kill you instead?”
“I wouldn’t do that, Goose,” he warned.
“Oh? And why not?”
“Because I’m wearing enough explosives to kill me, you, and make a nice dent in that beat-up old hull you call a ship.”
That stopped me!
“You’re wearing a suicider?”
He nodded.
“Where the hell did you get that from? That’s a doler trick!”
“Desperate times, Goose, desperate times! You’re right about Crow’s people having guns; they shot my best man while I was getting away. At least this way, if they get me, then I’m gonna take ’em with me! Now, are you gonna get me onboard your ship? Or are me and you gonna be decorating the outside?”
I looked at him as he opened his jacket, and sure enough, the bastard was wearing one of those vests. Dolers used them because they bought into the whole “martyr myth.” At least the younger and dumber ones did. Part of why doler riots were always such a mess, as well as why the police used heavy weapons when dealing with them.
My tablet pinged then and I looked at it. It was Emil. She confirmed that she’d have it all buttoned up by one. She had to go slow because some of Jarvis’s containers had to go along the centerline.
That gave me an idea.
“Look,” I said to Donde, looking him in the eyes. “If I go to the captain and try and smuggle another guy onboard, he’ll throw all of us off. I don’t have enough bribe money, and ship’s security does have guns and they’d be more than happy to shoot you if you try to board without the captain’s permission. We got a big money cargo and the captain’s really worried about hijackers.”
“Goose!” he growled, putting a hand in his pocket.
“Wait!” I said and waved the tablet. “What if I stuck you in one of the TEUs?”
“What’s a TEU?”
“These are,” I said, patting the sides of one of the containers.
“You want to lock me in one of those?”
“I’ll find one with food in it and hopefully some water too, so you don’t starve. It’s only ten days to our next stop, I can smuggle you out then!”
“Right, and leave me in there to die? I’m not buying it, Goose!”
“Donde, you’re wearing a suicider! You set that off inside the cargo container and it’ll be, like, ten times worse! You just might destroy the ship! I’ll check on you every couple of days! It’s not like I have a choice, right?” I said, putting a little desperation in my voice as I tried to sell him on it. I figured once we got into space, I could always just jettison the TEU he was in. Yeah, Jarvis or Marcus might be pissed at me, but I was beyond caring right now. There was just too much at stake here.
He frowned and thought about that.
“Don, what have you got to lose? If you stay here, you die. You weren’t expecting to travel first class, right?”
“There better be enough food!” he grumbled.
“Hold on, let me see what we’ve got in cargo.”
I started typing on my tablet.
Emil, I need a cargo container with food and drinks in it. Cheapest one we got.
What for?
Don’t ask! Just find me one! I need it ASAP. Is there one still on the ground, or can you move one out for me?
I’d have to move one out. It’ll take me a few minutes. I gotta move two others out of the way.
Do it.
You sure?
DO IT NOW! I typed back.
No need to yell! It’ll be the third one I set down.
I sighed and looked up at Donde with a smile as I cleared the tablet. “You owe me. I just had to bribe the loadmaster a couple K. They’re gonna off-load a couple of containers to ‘fix’ a balance issue. The third one they set down I’ll put you in. But we gotta be quick, because I have no idea how long it’ll be before they reload it.”
“Won’t they know what you’re doing?”
I snorted. “They probably think I’m trying to smuggle a whore onboard without the captain finding out.”
“People do that?”
“The male-to-female ratio ain’t the greatest at some of the places we go. A good whore can make serious bank. So yeah, it happens,” I said, spinning him a story that I knew he’d believe.
Donde nodded with a thoughtful look. “Huh. Maybe after the heat dies down and I come back here, we can do some business. I know some hot working girls.”
“Whatever. Come on, let’s find a safe place to wait and start counting containers.”
I led him ’round to one of the landing gear legs, which on a ship like the Iowa Hill were pretty massive. The next ten minutes were spent in relative quiet as I waited for containers to come off. When the third one hit the ground I immediately jogged over to it, with Donde hot on my heels.
I looked at the seal on it; everything was sealed, of course. Getting by the seal wasn’t hard, it was just a piece of wire looped through the holes where a padlock would normally go, then crimped with a special wafer. The problem was that the device that crimped the wafer had a very distinct design, which was different for every company, along with a date, time, and random number that was recorded on the shipping manifest. Which made forging them almost impossible.
I pulled out one of my engineering tools and cut the wire on the backside, away from the wafer, pulled it off, and, undogging the door, I pulled it open.
“I don’t have a flashlight!” Donde said.
“Use your phone.”
“It’s off!”
“Once I close this door, you’re not going to be getting a signal, so don’t worry about it. Set a timer so you don’t lose track of time. I’ll be back to check on you in twenty-four hours, got it?”
“Yeah, yeah. I got it. Thanks, Goose.”
“Oh, one other thing. It’s Dave. Nobody here knows about Goose. You go calling that out, and they’ll think you’re just a random stowaway.”
“Fine, fine,” Donde said and I pushed him inside. The container was pretty full, but everything inside was palletized for shipping and there were two “aisles” that ran from front to back for customs inspectors.
I slammed the doors behind him, locked them, then ran the wires back through. I’d come back with some epoxy and “fix” it later, not that I expected anyone to be inspecting us, we were outbound, after all. Pulling out my tablet I messaged Emil again.
I need this put on the very outside of the stack, right next to the cargo door.
What? Do you have any idea how much trouble that will cause?
I’ll give you a thousand credit bonus if you just do it and don’t ask any more questions.
Two.
Have you been taking lessons from my wife? Fine.
I got back a smiley face and, shaking my head, I went up the ladder and back into the ship in search of some epoxy. I now had a ticking time bomb inside my ship, but if worse came to worst, I could just jettison this one out into space and be done with it. I actually wasn’t too worried about Donde popping the bomb off now. TSU containers were actually built to withstand all sorts of nastiness after a few accidents and intentional bombings over a hundred years ago. Yeah, it’d do some damage, maybe even rip open a hole in the container.
But that was a whole lot better than my being turned into a bloody paste on the outside hull of the ship, or having a bomb go off in one of the living areas.
I shook my head as I looked at my watch; it was after eleven. Five more hours and we’d be gone. Twelve more and we’d be well on our way. Too bad I couldn’t just go crawl into bed and wait for it all to be over.
I went and found Ben, who was still in Engineering, and pulled him aside so we could talk without being overheard.
“We’ve got another problem,” I told him.
“What now?”
“Donde showed up. Seems Crow and Kauf both want him dead. So I stuck him in one of the containers.”
“Alive or dead?”
“Alive. He’s wearing one of those doler bomb vests.”
“Who else have you told?”
“Nobody. Once we get out of here, I’m thinking we can just jettison it.”
“Maybe you could drill a hole and gas him? Then pull him out while he’s unconscious?”
